bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
False Consciousness
Authors: Starks Brian
Published: September 2017

The term “false consciousness” was first coined by Friedrich Engels; there is no evidence that Karl Marx himself ever used it in his writing (Eagleton, 1991). The term's initial appearance in print was in a letter written by Engels to Franz Mehring in 1893: “Ideology is a process accomplished by the so‐called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process” (Tucker, 1978: 766). The concept, as developed in Engels's letter and in his later writings, is rooted in the earlier writings of Marx and Engels inThe German Ideology. While theorists have debated whether Marx himself would have accepted the precise term “false consciousness,” the concept is closely tied to Marx's notion of a “dominant ideology” and is useful for understanding Marx's theory of historical change. As with many sociological ideas, the meaning of false consciousness has varied and changed over time as new theorists have drawn on it and as these new formulations have been challenged and contested (see Eyerman, 1981; Eagleton, 1991).
Falsification
Authors: Tudor Andrew
Published: September 2017

The concept of falsification is indelibly marked by the methodological doctrine of falsificationism, associated above all with the work of Karl Popper. He first developed the elements of his position in the early 1920s as part of a project to establish a logically defensible criterion of scientificity, culminating in the publication ofLogik der Forschung(later translated asThe Logic of Scientific Discovery) in 1934. Falsifiability emerged as the basis of his solution to the so‐called “problem of demarcation.” Much elaborated over subsequent years, his analysis of falsification became the foundation for the Popperian school in the philosophy and history of science and the central feature in their influential account of scientific growth. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, dissatisfaction with this analysis, not least among some of Popper's own followers, gave rise to variously radical revisions of the basic falsificationist position. Today, both the Popperian doctrine and the concept of falsification should be understood as component elements in a more diverse, though perhaps less rigorous, conceptualization of theory testing in science.
Falsification
Authors: Tudor Andrew
Published: September 2017

The concept of falsification is indelibly marked by the methodological doctrine of falsificationism, associated above all with the work of Karl Popper. He first developed the elements of his position in the early 1920s as part of a project to establish a logically defensible criterion of scientificity, culminating in the publication ofLogik der Forschung(later translated asThe Logic of Scientific Discovery) in 1934. Falsifiability emerged as the basis of his solution to the “problem of demarcation.” Much elaborated over subsequent years, his analysis of falsification became the foundation for the Popperian school in the philosophy and history of science and the central feature in their influential account of scientific growth. However, in the 1960s and 1970s dissatisfaction with this analysis, not least among some of Popper's own followers, gave rise to variously radical revisions of the basic falsificationist position. Today, both the Popperian doctrine and the concept of falsification should be understood as component elements in a more diverse, though perhaps less rigorous, conceptualization of theory testing in science.
Family, Men's Involvement in
Authors: Hofferth Sandra L.
Published: September 2017

Father involvement refers to involvement by fathers in the daily responsibilities of parenthood. According to data from the early 1990s, only 12.6 percent of men 45 to 64 years of age report never having had children (Bachu 1996). Thus, although not all men are fathers, most eventually father a child and have, therefore, the opportunity to act as a father to their own children. Men without their own biological children have the opportunity to be a father to their partners' children through marriage or cohabitation. Sixty‐four percent of children live with their biological or adoptive mother and father, 6.7 percent live with a biological parent and a stepparent, 21 percent live with a single mother, another 2 percent live with their single mother and the mother's cohabiting partner, 2.5 percent live with their single biological father, and 4 percent do not live with a parent (Hofferth et al. 2002).
Family Structure and Poverty
Authors: Lichter Daniel T.
Published: September 2017

Family structure and poverty are inextricably linked. Different types of families have much different risk profiles for poverty and welfare dependence. Family structure typically refers to the myriad organizational and compositional parts that make up the family. Among others, these include headship patterns (e.g., female‐headed families), the marital histories of family members (e.g., single or married or cohabiting), the presence of multiple generations, family size, and the presence of co‐residential children. These structural features of families (hence, family structure) reflect individual choices that are shaped by cultural values and norms, economic constraints, and demographic events, such as childbearing or death.
Family Theory
Authors: Cheal David
Published: September 2017

Family theory consists of sets of propositions that attempt to explain some aspect of family life. Theorizing involves making general statements about some phenomenon, and an important characteristic of family theory, therefore, is that it involves a degree of abstraction from reality. Theoretical statements are abstract statements employing concepts that refer to things in the real world. Theories differ in the concepts that they use, and in the statements that are made about them. There are many different theories in family theory, and the relationships between them range from complementary borrowing of ideas, through mutual indifference, to antagonism.
Fantasy City
Authors: Hannigan John
Published: September 2017

“Fantasy City” refers to a new urban form located at the intersection of leisure, consumption, tourism, and real estate development. In
Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis
(1998), Canadian sociologist John Hannigan points to six defining features: fantasy cities are characteristically themo‐centric (scripted), aggressively branded, active day and night, modular (mixing a standard array of retail and entertainment components), solipsistic (isolated physically and economically from the neighborhoods that surround them), and postmodern (in their reliance on simulation and spectacle). This set of phenomena is empirically manifested in an infrastructure of themed restaurants, nightclubs, shopping malls, multiplex cinemas, virtual reality arcades, casino‐hotels, book and record megastores, sports stadiums and arenas, and other urban entertainment destinations. While the only urban centers that currently qualify as full‐scale fantasy cities are Las Vegas and Orlando, Florida, most cities today have some commercial neighborhoods and developments that display these characteristics to a greater or lesser extent. Furthermore, fantasy city development has spread aggressively beyond the borders of North America, with large‐scale projects currently operating or under construction in such countries as Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai.
Fantasy City
Authors: Hannigan John
Published: September 2017

Fantasy city refers to an urban form located at the intersection of leisure, consumption, tourism, and real estate development. It is characteristically scripted, hard‐branded, active day and night, modular, solipsistic, and postmodern. Fantasy cities satisfy a preference by middle‐class consumers for sanitized environments of “riskless risk.” In recent years, the fantasy city model has faltered in North America and Europe because of too much competition and too little product differentiation, but it continues to thrive in Asia, the Middle East, and South Africa.
Feminism and Sociology
Authors: Lengermann Patricia , Niebrugge Gillian
Published: September 2017

Feminism and sociology share a long history of mutual influence. Feminists have used sociological insights to develop strategies that improve women's lives and have, in turn, given to sociology a variety of concepts, methodological practices, and organizational innovations.
Feminist Activism in Latin America
Authors: Shayne Julie
Published: September 2017

Feminism has a variety of meanings. According to Nikki Craske, despite the often‐heated debates about the meaning of feminism, most would likely concur with Rosalind Delmar's assessment that feminism attempts to transform women from object to subject, specifically with respect to knowledge. In other words, feminism and by extension feminist activism is about centering the lives of women. Sonia Alvarez (1990), another leading scholar of Latin American feminisms, defines an act as feminist if it strives to transform social roles assigned to women while simultaneously challenging gender power arrangements, and advancing claims for women's rights to equality and personal autonomy.
Feminist Anthropology
Authors: Johnson Helen
Published: September 2017

Feminism refers to the awareness of women's oppression and exploitation at work, in the home, and in society, as well as the conscious political action taken by women for progressive social and economic change toward equality and recognition of women's difference. Social anthropology has evolved from a dominant western discourse in which it explores cultural difference and uniqueness, while simultaneously seeking the similarities in human lived experiences. Feminist theoretical critiques entered social anthropology in the 1970s and are vital to ongoing theoretical and methodological developments. Feminist social anthropologists question many of the discipline's basic assumptions and have documented scholars' failure to fully explore the human experience due to the neglect of the organizing categories of “women” and “gender” as significant dimensions of social life.
Fertility: Low
Authors: Morgan S. Philip
Published: September 2017

Low fertility implies a “not low” referent; there are two. The first is “high fertility.” High fertility can be defined as some maximal, hypothetical level for a population, i.e., one with early marriage, close birth spacing, and no attempt to control family size. Fifteen births per woman provides a reasonable estimate of mean maximal fertility. The highest observed levels of fertility are closer to ten births per woman, and even in the absence of substantial contraceptive use and abortion can be one‐half this level. Regardless, low fertility implies much lower levels – levels approximating two or fewer births per woman. The fertility transition refers to the societal shift from “high” to “low” fertility (and is produced by deliberate attempts to achieve small family sizes).
Fertility: Nonmarital
Authors: Musick Kelly
Published: September 2017

Nonmarital fertility – or having a child outside of marriage – has become an increasingly important phenomenon demographically, socially, and politically. Fully one in three US births were to unmarried women in 2000, compared to just 5 percent in 1960. This change has generated a great deal of concern. Many worry because unmarried mothers tend to be younger and less advantaged socially and economically than married mothers, and their children tend not to do as well as those living with two married biological parents. Others worry that the growing number of families formed outside of marriage is weakening the institution of marriage. Policymakers have introduced measures in recent years explicitly designed to reduce the number of births to unmarried women. The 1996 welfare reform legislation, Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), for example, includes incentives for states to reduce their rates of nonmarital childbearing, and reauthorization legislation includes resources to strengthen and promote marriage through outreach and counseling.
Film
Authors: Kellner Douglas
Published: September 2017

Film emerged as one of the first mass‐produced cultural forms of the twentieth century and cinema became one of its distinctive and highly influential industries. Based on new technologies of mechanical reproduction that made possible simulations of the real and the production of fantasy worlds, cinema provided a novel mode of culture that changed patterns of leisure activity and played an important role in social life. Early films were the inventions of technicians and entrepreneurs like the Lumière brothers and Méliès in France and the Edison Corporation in the US.
Framing and Social Movements
Authors: Snow David A.
Published: September 2017

Framing, within the context of social movements, refers to the signifying work or meaning construction engaged in by movement adherents (e.g., leaders, activists, and rank‐and‐file participants) and other actors (e.g., adversaries, institutional elites, media, countermovements) relevant to the interests of movements and the challenges they mount in pursuit of those interests. The concept of framing is borrowed from Erving Goffman's
Frame Analysis
(1974) and is rooted in the symbolic interactionist and constructionist principle that meanings do not naturally or automatically attach themselves to the objects, events, or experiences we encounter, but arise, instead, through interpretive processes mediated by culture. Applied to social movements, the idea of framing problematizes the meanings associated with relevant events, activities, places, and actors, suggesting that those meanings are typically contestable and negotiable and thus open to debate and differential interpretation. From this vantage point, mobilizing grievances are seen neither as naturally occurring sentiments nor as arising automatically from specifiable material conditions, but as the result of interactively based interpretation or signifying work. The verb “framing” conceptualizes this signifying work, which is one of the activities that social movement leaders and participants, as well as their adversaries, do on a regular basis.
Friendship during the Later Years
Authors: Adams Rebecca G.
Published: September 2017

Friends are important during later adulthood in many ways, contributing to psychological well‐being, physical health, and even longevity, and serving as sources of affection and social support. This entry discusses current and past trends in research on older adult friendships, including theoretical, substantive, and methodological content, critiques the current state of the literature in these areas, and suggests future agendas for each of them. Some of the main findings regarding friendship and aging are discussed, including the relationship between aging and involvement with friends as well as the homogeneity of friendships.
Fair Trade
Authors: Carducci Vince
Published: September 2017

Fair trade is an approach to market exchange that advocates values other than the purely economic metrics of rational choice and self‐interest. Specifically, fair trade seeks to establish relationships of production, distribution, and consumption that are sustainable and equitable for all parties in a transaction network. As a mode of trade reform, its intent is to promote ecological, social, and economic global justice. Fair trade is commonly contrasted with free trade in its attempt to ameliorate perceived market failures and disadvantages experienced especially by small producers in lesser‐developed regions under the neoliberal form of globalization. Typically inaugurated under the auspices of a non‐governmental organization (NGO) or social entrepreneur, fair trade programs generally work by setting up direct relationships between small producers in lesser‐developed areas, typically in the Global South, and consumers in developed markets, typically in the Global North. By reducing the influence of intermediaries and encouraging self‐determination, fair trade proposes to enhance the well‐being of the less fortunate of the world while eliminating the corruption, exploitation, and aid dependency associated with conventional forms of development. Fair trade is also held up as an avenue of consumer empowerment, a mechanism for accommodating personal reflexivity in a marketplace that is said to increasingly take into account the moral dimension.
Film analysis
Authors: Lydaki Anna
Published: September 2017

Since the 1960s the cinema has aroused the interest of social scientists, and films have been studied as a human, cultural product with response from the masses, which can constitute a document or a tool for social research. This is not because cinematic representation is an exact portrayal of the world; the characters and relationships represented on the screen do not always portray things as they actually happen, even in documentaries. What renders a film as a document is the fact that, in every case, the creation of the artist is rooted in reality and, particularly, in the social–historical circumstances of life; and it is these that are expressed in his/her work.
Facebook
Authors: Murthy Dhiraj
Published: September 2017

Facebook is an online social networking site which has over 900 million users. The site seeks to foster interactions between friends through short updates, sharing photographs, and playing games together. The medium also encourages social commentary through these interactions. Facebook has become a household name not only because of its large user base, but also because of its prominent use in social movements (including the Arab Spring), elections (e.g. the 2008 United States presidential election), and a successful feature film about it,
The Social Network
(David Fincher, 2010).
Gambling as a Social Problem
Authors: Schmidt Lucia
Published: September 2017

Gambling refers to wagering money or other belongings on chance activities or events with random or uncertain outcomes (Devereux 1979). Gambling opportunities are now widely available throughout the world and playing with and for money is socially accepted as a source of entertainment and recreation. However, a growing tendency to highlight problematic aspects is also to be noticed.
Gay Bashing
Authors: Smyth Michael A. , Jenness Valerie
Published: September 2017

Often subsumed under the broader rubric of “hate crime,” gay bashing generally denotes the perpetration of violence against people identified as, or assumed to be, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgendered (LGBT). Although examples of this type of behavior range from acts of symbolic and rhetorical violence to ongoing bullying‐type behaviors, physical assaults, and homicide, selection of the victim based on perceived non‐normative sexuality and/or gender expression is common to gay bashing in all its manifestations. This type of violence is typically aimed not only at a primary target, but also at the entire group to which the target is thought to belong.
Gay Gene
Authors: Stein Edward
Published: September 2017

The idea that a gene or set of genes makes some people sexually attracted to people of the same sex has become widely accepted over the past few decades. However, scientific evidence supporting the existence of a gay gene is inconclusive and the political and legal rationale some scientists have for the “search for the gay gene” (Hamer & Copeland 1994) is dubious.
Gender Bias
Authors: Rothchild Jennifer
Published: September 2017

Gender bias is behavior that shows favoritism toward one gender over another. Most often, gender bias is the act of favoring men and/or boys over women and/or girls. However, this is not always the case. In order to define gender bias completely, we first must make a distinction between the terms gender and sex. When we use the term
gender
, we mean socially constructed expectations and roles for women and men, for girls and boys. Specifically, girls and women are expected to demonstrate feminine behavior, and boys and men are expected to act masculine. By
sex
, we mean biological differences assigned to females and males in order to distinguish between the two. The biological characteristics assigned to females and males often consist of primary or secondary sex characteristics.
Gender, Consumption and
Authors: Williams Christine , Sauceda Laura
Published: September 2017

The history of consumerism has been shaped by gender inequality. During the colonial period, when families produced most of what they consumed, a gender division of labor prevailed in which men supplied the raw materials (e.g., wheat, flax, animals) and women transformed them into commodities for consumption (e.g., bread, cloth, meals). During industrialization, the period characterized by historians as bringing about the “separation of spheres,” productive activity moved outside the household and eventually became seen as an appropriately masculine endeavor. Consumption became privatized, a range of activities under the purview of women consigned to the domestic arena. Although the separation of spheres was more cultural ideal than historical practice for many marginalized social groups (African Americans, the poor, immigrants), the association of women with consumption, and men with production, prevails today and shapes research and theory on consumerism.
Girls, Women, and Crime
Authors: Gadsden Gloria
Published: September 2017

What is missing from traditional discussions of deviance and crime is the notion of gender. A rather accessible definition of gender can be found in most introductory sociology textbooks. For the purposes of this entry, gender is defined as the social positions, attitudes, traits, and behaviors that a society assigns to females and males (Macionis, 2012). An earlier examination of theories of crime revealed androcentric or male‐oriented perspectives. Early theorists and researchers extrapolated from studies of boys and men when attempting to explain female criminal behavior. So, barring examinations of a few deviant behaviors, most notably shoplifting, violations of sexual norms (e.g., promiscuity, teen pregnancy, prostitution), status offenses (e.g., runaways), and infanticide, there were few serious considerations of female criminal behavior.
Gender, Education and
Authors: Pearson Jennifer , Riegle‐Crumb Catherine
Published: September 2017

Social scientists and educational researchers paid relatively little attention to issues of gender in education until the 1970s, when questions emerged concerning equity in girls' and women's access to education across the world. Researchers documented a link between increasing rates of female education in developing countries and a subsequent decline in fertility rates (e.g., Boserup 1970). In the context of an emerging global economy, increasing female representation in primary and secondary education was cited as an important factor in promoting national economic development, and therefore seen as a vehicle for social change.
Gender Mainstreaming
Authors: Roth Silke
Published: September 2017

Gender mainstreaming is a strategy for achieving gender equality. The approach seeks to reorganize and restructure policies, institutions, and social programs by taking women's and men's perspectives, experiences, and needs into consideration. Gender mainstreaming does not replace, but supplements, specific targeted interventions to address gender inequality such as affirmative action.
Gendered Organizations/Institutions
Authors: Rauscher Lauren
Published: September 2017

Understanding organizational practices and processes is central to explaining gender inequality. While women remain clustered in secondary labor markets marked by lower wages, uncertainty, short career ladders, and few if any benefits, most men find employment in primary labor markets characterized by greater economic rewards. Occupational and job segregation continue to be an enduring feature within most firms. Additionally, gender differences in income, power, authority, autonomy, and status translate into men, particularly white men, enjoying systematic advantages over women. Despite changing social and economic conditions and legislation prohibiting sex discrimination, these inequalities persist and subsequently inform an impressive body of labor market and workplace analyses.
Generalized Other
Authors: Vail D. Angus
Published: September 2017

The generalized other is one of George Herbert Mead's central concepts in his seminal discussion of the social genesis of the self. According to Mead, the self resides in the individual's ability to take account of himself or herself as a social being. It thus requires the individual to take the role of the other as well as taking account of how his or her actions might affect the group.
Generalized other
is Mead's (1962: 154–8) term for the collection of roles and attitudes that people use as a reference point for figuring out how to behave in a given situation. This term is often used in discussions of the play and game stages of development.
Genocide
Authors: Karstedt Susanne
Published: September 2017

Genocide has been termed the crime of the twentieth century, and in many ways it epitomizes this “age of extremes” (Hobsbawm 1994). The century started with genocides in Africa – the genocide of the Hereros by the Germans; and in Asia – the massacre of the Armenians in Turkey. The Nazi Holocaust of the European Jews will forever be the defining event of the century. The term “genocide” was coined, and it was legally defined and criminalized. The international community committed itself to the protection of threatened populations and to the prosecution and punishment of those who were responsible for mass killings, and was successful in a number of high‐ and low‐ranking cases. At the end of the century, international intervention in cases of genocide started. During the first decade of the twenty‐first century, the victims of mass violence, violent ethnic cleansing, and serious sexual violence in Africa and Asia are estimated at more than a million. The prevention of mass atrocities and genocide and the protection of citizens are key concerns of the international community in the twenty‐first century.
Gini Coefficient
Authors: Sun Ivan Y.
Published: September 2017

The Gini coefficient is the most commonly used measure of inequality. The coefficient is named after the Italian statistician and demographer Corrado Gini (1884–1965), who invented the measure in 1912. While the Gini coefficient is often used to measure income and wealth inequality, it is also widely employed to indicate uneven distribution in other social issues, such as industrial location and development, health care, and racial segregation. The coefficient ranges from 0 to 1, with 0 representing perfect equality (i.e., everyone has the same income) and 1 perfect inequality (i.e., a single person has all the income). An extension of the Gini coefficient is the Gini index, which equals the Gini coefficient multiplied by 100.
Global Economy
Authors: Sklair Leslie
Published: September 2017

While they are often used interchangeably, the idea of the global economy should be clearly distinguished from the idea of the international economy. The international economy refers to the sum of all the relations between the national economies of all the countries in the world, particularly binational and multinational exchanges, whereas the global economy refers to the sum of all the relations between economic agents whether they are state or private or of other mixed forms. In practice, this distinction boils down to the analytic choice between a state‐centrist analysis of economic relations and regulation, and a transnational analysis of economic actors, practices, and institutions. This distinctive concept of the global economy comes from globalization theorists and researchers who have identified globalizing corporations and their local affiliates, those who own and control them, and those in influential positions who serve their interests, as the dominant economic forces in the world today (Dicken, 2011; Sklair, 2001).
Globalization, Culture and
Authors: Robertson Roland
Published: September 2017

As the debate about globalization has rapidly expanded and become more, rather than less, contentious, there has emerged what might be called a “negative consensus” concerning the idea of global culture. While there is most definitely no widespread agreement, either “globally” or “locally,” about what we might mean by the term global culture(s), there is – for many, a seemingly reluctant – confirmation of the proposition that the issue of global culture is of paramount significance.
Globalization, Sexuality and
Authors: Binnie Jon
Published: September 2017

The globalization of sexuality refers to the sexualized and embodied nature of processes associated with the movement of people, capital, and goods across national boundaries. It also refers to how the consciousness of the world as a single place is sexualized. The globalization of sexuality is manifest in a range of processes and phenomena that are often couched and approached in highly emotive terms (e.g., the trafficking of women into prostitution, mail‐order brides, the development of the sex industry and sex tourism). It is also characterized by the AIDS pandemic, mass international tourism, and the development of cyberspace. Each of these has in turn intensified consciousness of the status of sexual minorities and the unevenness of their treatment across the globe. Key to our understandings of the globalization of sexuality is the relationship between sexuality and economics. While debates on the globalization of gay identity have been marked by an ambivalence over the development of gay identities and politicized communities outside of the West, work on the globalization of sexuality more generally has tended to have been marked by concerns with the worse excesses of what Smith (1997) has termed the “satanic geographies of globalization.” Here we are concerned with the trafficking of women forced into prostitution. Contemporary moral panics on the scale and extent of the trafficking of women for prostitution across national borders mask the extent to which sex work has been intimately connected to the development of the global capitalist system. The transnational migration of sex workers has taken place for centuries. However, there is a perception we are seeing an acceleration in the scale of the phenomenon resulting from increased mobility across national borders – as witnessed by the increasing numbers from Eastern Europe working in the sex industry in Western Europe.
Goffman, Erving (1922–1982)
Authors: Smith Gregory W. H.
Published: September 2017

The work of Erving Goffman centered on explicating the structures and processes of the “interaction order,” the domain of social life brought about and facilitated by the physical co‐presence of persons. In a series of extraordinary writings published from the early 1950s through the early 1980s, Goffman developed an utterly singular vision of social life, expressed in a highly distinctive language that reflected his extraordinary observational acuity and his unmatched sociological grasp of metaphor and irony.
Grobalization
Authors: Ryan J. Michael
Published: September 2017

Grobalization is a term coined by sociologist George Ritzer (2004) in his book
The Globalization of Nothing
. It is meant to serve as a companion to the widely employed concept of glocalization. While glocalization represents the unique combinations resulting from the interpenetration of the global and the local, grobalization represents “the imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations, organizations, and the like and their desire, indeed need, to impose themselves on various geographic areas” (p. 73). Thus, glocalization would be most closely associated with postmodern, pluralistic ideas of heterogeneity, whereas grobalization represents a more modern, imperialistic, and homogenizing perspective.
Grobalization
Authors: Ryan J. Michael
Published: September 2017

Grobalization is a term coined by sociologist George Ritzer (2004) in his book
The Globalization of Nothing
. It is meant to serve as a companion to the widely employed concept of glocalization. While glocalization represents the unique combinations resulting from the interpenetration of the global and the local, grobalization represents “the imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations, organizations, and the like and their desire, indeed need, to impose themselves on various geographic areas” (p. 73). Thus, glocalization would be most closely associated with postmodern, pluralistic ideas of heterogeneity and hybridity, whereas grobalization represents a more modern, imperialistic, and homogenizing perspective more closely associated with cultural convergence.
Grounded Theory
Authors: Charmaz Kathy
Published: September 2017

The term grounded theory refers to a set of methods for conducting the research process and the product of this process, the resulting theoretical analysis of an empirical problem. The name grounded theory mirrors its fundamental premise that researchers can and should develop theory from rigorous analyses of empirical data. As a specific methodological approach, grounded theory refers to a set of systematic guidelines for data gathering, coding, synthesizing, categorizing, and integrating concepts to generate middle‐range theory. Grounded theory methods are distinctive in that data collection and analysis proceed simultaneously and each informs the other. From the beginning of the research process, the researcher analyzes the data and identifies analytic leads and tentative categories to develop through further data collection. A grounded theory of a studied topic starts with concrete data and ends with rendering them in an explanatory theory.
Group Processes
Authors: Lucas Jeffrey W.
Published: September 2017

Sociology's group processes perspective is one of the three “faces” of sociological social psychology (Smith‐Lovin & Molm 2000). The perspective is characterized by theoretical development and basic research on fundamental social processes that occur in group contexts. Work in the group processes tradition dates to scholars who were interested in the interactions of individuals in small groups. As the perspective has developed, its focus has largely evolved to an interest in the processes that occur in group contexts rather than in groups themselves.
Geertz, Clifford (1926–2006)
Authors: Smith Philip
Published: September 2017

Clifford Geertz was one of the most important cultural theorists of the latter part of the twentieth century. Working in the field of anthropology, Geertz conducted ethnographic research in Morocco and Indonesia. In books such as
Islam Observed
(Geertz 1969), he did much to highlight the diversity of Muslim societies. Yet he is best known not for his empirical contributions, but rather for the essays collected under the title
The Interpretation of Cultures
(1973). These provided a hugely influential manifesto for the hermeneutic approach to social inquiry, one that has reached across the human sciences and made Geertz himself an iconic figure.
Gendered Professions
Authors: Loos Martina
Published: September 2017

The term “gendered professions” denotes that gender meanings are inscribed in the construction of professions. Professions represent a distinct category of occupational work, historically reserved for male‐dominated occupations like medicine and law, while women‐dominated occupations are defined as “semi‐” or “aspiring” professions. The concept of a profession is perceived as a means of improving occupational status and is assumed to be gender‐neutral. Social scientists have begun to explore the relation between gender and profession and have coined terms like “gendered work” and “gendering professions.” Professions are established and continue to change in a social context that draws mainly on a prevailing gender ideology, which results in gender discrimination in workplace practice as well as organizational structure. Women enter the professions in larger numbers and many reforms have created new opportunities for women's professional work, but gender‐based inequalities like occupational segregation, pay gaps, and career barriers remain.
Gandhi, Mahatma (1869–1948)
Authors: Mittal Sushil
Published: September 2017

Non‐violence as a strategy for change has repeatedly proven to be dangerously effective rather than too idealistic, harmless, or simply useless. It can have particularly unpleasant effects on oppressive traditions and entrenched interests that seem unaware that they are resting on unjust and unequal structures. Nashville, Tennessee learned that lesson in 1960 when James Lawson organized the first peaceful sit‐in at racially segregated lunch counters in downtown stores. Despite resistance by merchants, complicity by the local government, lack of protection by police, and efforts to provoke the well‐disciplined demonstrators to respond directly to harassment, the campaign succeeded and contributed to a positive transformation in the city. It took Nashville a few years to absorb and consolidate the changes set in motion by Lawson's non‐violent leadership, and it took the city's premier university even longer. Vanderbilt University expelled Lawson, who was a theological student at the time, and fired the Divinity School's energetic young Dean because he publicly protested Lawson's expulsion. The fired J. Robert Nelson lost his job but went on to a distinguished career elsewhere, and the Reverend James Lawson finally received long‐delayed recognition when he was named Vanderbilt's alumnus of the year in 2005. Non‐violence is effective, but requires training and discipline in order to work, and can be costly to participants.
Health and Culture
Authors: Quah Stella
Published: September 2017

The cumulative knowledge from nearly a century's worth of studies confirms that the sociological analysis of health and illness would be grossly incomplete without the consideration of culture. Culture is both the context and an important determinant of the behavior, beliefs, and norms of individuals affected by illness and who are making decisions on help‐seeking, as well as of people and organizations whose role it is to help and to heal.
Health and Religion
Authors: Clair Jeffrey Michael
Published: September 2017

Concepts of health and illness in human society originated from traditional religious views about life and death. One of the first sociologists to study religion was Émile Durkheim, who found that distinctions between ideas about the sacred and profane were connected to notions of health and illness. Religious views of the sacred body, for example, were equated with health. When someone became ill, it was not because of hygiene, but because of a breach of social norms separating the sacred from the profane. Within this type of belief system, notions of sickness and misfortune generated attempts to justify and explain morally why a particular person was suffering from disease: “Why me?” (Turner 2004).
Health Risk Behavior
Authors: Lupton Deborah
Published: September 2017

Health risk behavior involves actions and related attitudes and perceptions that contribute to people's propensity to engage in, or avoid, activities that have been deemed by experts to be hazardous or dangerous to their health. Considerable research in public health and medicine has been devoted to identifying health risks and the behaviors associated with these risks in the attempt to assist people to avoid them.
Health, Self‐Rated
Authors: Snead M. Christine
Published: September 2017

Self‐rated health, or self‐reported health (SRH), is a measure of a respondent's subjective sense of health. The SRH is commonly used to capture a general sense of health from the perspective of the respondent, which is assessed by one simple global question about their overall health. There are many phrasings of this question, including “In general, would you say your health is …,” “How would you rate your overall health …,” and “How is your health, compared with others your age?” Response items for these questions are Likert‐type scales with responses typically scored from 1–5 (excellent, good, fair, poor, very bad) or 1–3 (better, same, worse). Methodologically, the SRH has been found to be both a reliable and valid measure of a respondent's health status (Krause & Jay 1994; Lundberg & Manderbacka 1996; Miilunpalo et al. 1997).
Health and Social Class
Authors: Lahelma Eero
Published: September 2017

The Black Report on Inequalities in Health (Townsend & Davidson 1982) refers to social class as “segments of populations sharing broadly similar types and levels of resources, with broadly similar styles of living and (for some sociologists) some shared perception of their collective condition.” Two main sociological traditions of social class attach people to social structures, emphasizing either their relationships to production, ownership, and material resources (Marx) or their relationships to markets, status, power, and lifestyle (Weber). While in the Marxist tradition class positions between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat tend to be opposite, in the Weberian tradition social classes rather follow a hierarchical stratification. However, these sociological traditions of social class share the idea of unequal distribution of resources and assets in society. Both traditions have influenced the basic medical sociological assumptions that social divisions shape morbidity and mortality, and that poor health is likely to emerge from poor living conditions (Blaxter 1997).
Healthy Life Expectancy
Authors: Hayward Mark D.
Published: September 2017

Declining old‐age mortality has motivated research on the interplay between mortality, chronic disease morbidity, and disability. Do declining mortality rates signal declining morbidity and disability rates? Are the substantial gains in
life expectancy
accompanied by an increase in the expected years in good health, i.e., healthy life expectancy? Investigations of healthy life expectancy are important for anticipating an aging population's demands on health care and evaluating the effects of interventions and policy changes on both the length and quality of life.
Hegemonic Masculinity
Authors: Levy Donald P.
Published: September 2017

Developed in the 1980s (Carrigan et al. 1985) to provide a relational and socially constructed conception of men and masculinities, the term hegemonic masculinity describes the hierarchical interaction between multiple masculinities and explains how some men make it appear normal and necessary that they dominate most women and other men (Connell 1987).
Highbrow/Lowbrow
Authors: Halle David , Wells Maia Morgan
Published: September 2017

The distinction between “high culture” and “popular culture,” or “highbrow” and “lowbrow,” has underpinned many of the important debates about culture over the last 50 years, especially in the US, Britain, and France, but also elsewhere. Theories of culture have tended either to presuppose this distinction or to discuss and fine‐tune various aspects of it.
Horkheimer, Max (1895–1973)
Authors: Schulz Markus S.
Published: September 2017

Max Horkheimer is best known as the long‐time director of the Frankfurt School and co‐author of theDialectic of Enlightenment(with Theodor W. Adorno). In the 1930s Horkheimer defined the Frankfurt School's agenda of interdisciplinary empirical research, guided the Institute through the years of exile, and succeeded in its reestablishment in Frankfurt after World War II.
Households
Authors: Allan Graham
Published: September 2017

When people discuss family life there is often a confusion between family as kinship and family as household. The two ideas are so much part of commonsense understandings of “family” that they are elided together. Though less common in sociology, a similar lack of clarity over what aspect of “family” is being examined sometimes arises. In principle, the distinction is clear‐cut. Family as kin are all those people who are linked to you genealogically or who you otherwise define as kin (Schneider 1968; Silva & Smart 1999). Typically, they remain kin whether or not they live with you, though the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion drawn around “my family” may alter across the life course. Households, on the other hand, are essentially those people who share a home with you. In this sense “my family” are those with whom I live and with whom I participate in a domestic economy. The membership of an individual's household will certainly change over time, and may for significant periods include people who are clearly not regarded as family.
Human Genome and the Science of Life
Authors: Kerr Anne
Published: September 2017

Although the double helix structure of DNA was discovered in 1953 by James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins, and Rosalind Franklin, it was not until the 1980s that powerful sequencing and information technologies were developed that enabled scientists to identify particular genes associated with hereditary diseases and to begin to map all of the genes in human DNA: the so‐called human genome. The human genome project was a massive international mapping exercise which began in the 1990s and culminated in the publication of a draft sequence by the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium of the entire human genome in 2001, which is freely available on the Internet.
Human Rights
Authors: Karstedt Susanne
Published: September 2017

“Human rights are those liberties, immunities, and benefits which, by accepted contemporary values, all human beings should be able to claim ‘as of right’ of the society in which they live” (Encyclopedia of Public International Law1995: 886). Virtually all states embrace and support the idea of human rights, and they have indicated some general agreement as to their objectives and contents. This definition which casts human rights in legal terms barely mirrors the expectations that individuals, groups, and peoples have attached to them. When on December 10, 1948 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the Declaration was hailed as “an international Magna Charta of all mankind” that could set up a common standard of achievement (Risse & Sikkink 1999: 1). Five decades later, human rights are seen as “offering a framework for debate over basic values and conceptions of a good society” (Charlesworth & Chinkin 2000: 210), and as social claims made by individuals and groups against organized power for the purpose of enhancing human dignity. Human rights are a powerful discourse on themoral natureof society and individuals that is simultaneously alegal discourseon rights, obligations, and accountability.
Hypersegregation
Authors: Denton Nancy A.
Published: September 2017

Hypersegregation occurs when a race/ethnic group is highly segregated in multiple ways, no matter how segregation is conceptualized or measured. It is an explicit recognition of the fact that residential segregation by race is a complex phenomenon that is multidimensional in nature. First used in 1989 in an article by Massey and Denton about patterns of black–white segregation in large US metropolitan areas in 1980, the term now occurs in both the academic and popular literature to describe the extremely high residential segregation experienced by African Americans in the US. Though residential segregation has generally declined in recent decades for African Americans, hypersegregation was still documented for African Americans in both 1990 and 2000. For the first time in 2000, Hispanics are hypersegregated in two places as well. No other group experiences hypersegregation in US metropolitan areas.