bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Aesthetics
Authors: Binkley Sam
Published: September 2017

Attempts to reconcile the concerns of sociologists with those of art historians and aestheticians have been among the most contentious of recent interdisciplinary efforts. The tendency of sociologists to reduce social “epiphenomena” to their independent variables in social structure impinges on the core belief of artists and aesthetes in the power of art to transcend the mundane. In its most reductionistic version the aesthetic is collapsed into a mechanism for the reproduction of class hierarchies and for the securing of legitimacy for social elites – a thesis most aggressively advanced in Marx's reduction of the cultural and ideological “superstructure” to a dependent relation to the economic “base.” Such a deterministic view is taken up in the aesthetic theory of the Frankfurt School, most notably in the writings of Adorno. In a manner typical of mid‐century cultural Marxism, Adorno differentiated between aesthetic productions before and after the arrival of capitalism and the expansion of commercial culture industries. Where aesthetics in the pre‐capitalist period possessed moral and ethical value, the aesthetics of mass entertainment eroded the capacity for individual thought and action, reproducing conformity and docility in the population through the standardization of personal taste (Adorno 1991). Similar assaults on the autonomy of the aesthetic are recorded in Veblen's (1899) account of “conspicuous consumption,” wherein objects of aesthetic value are read as expressions of “honorific waste,” symbolic trophies of the dominance of one group over another.
Analytic Induction
Authors: Denzin Norman K.
Published: September 2017

Originally associated with the work of Florian Znaniecki (1934), analytic induction is an interpretive strategy that seeks universal explanations of the phenomenon in question. Analytic induction involves a process of generating and then testing hypotheses against each successive case or instance of the phenomenon. Its decisive feature “is the analysis of the exceptional or negative case, the case which is deviant to the working hypothesis” (Buhler‐Niederberger 1985). Negative case analysis may be regarded as a “process of revising hypotheses with hindsight” (Lincoln & Guba 1985). Analytic induction directs the investigator to formulate processual generalizations that apply to all instances of the problem. This differentiates analytic induction from other forms of causal analysis, including the multivariate method where concern is directed to generalizations that apply, not to all instances of the phenomenon at hand, but rather to most or some of them.
Awareness Contexts
Authors: Timmermans Stefan
Published: September 2017

In their 1965 landmark studyAwareness of Dying, Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss introduced awareness context as “whateachinteracting person knows of the patient's defined status, along with his recognition of the others’ awareness of his own definition …awareness context… is the context within which these people interact while taking cognizance of it.” Studying the process of dying in six San Francisco Bay area hospitals, Glaser and Strauss were struck by how little information patients possessed about their impending death, even though the staff were often aware that the patient might be dying. They analyzed the organizational‐structural conditions for secrecy, its resulting interactions, changes in awareness, and consequences of the interactions for the participants and the setting. Drawing from the symbolic interactionist tradition, Glaser and Strauss intended to capture the work of managing and negotiating social change within the structural context of the hospital.
British Sociological Association
Authors: Platt Jennifer
Published: September 2017

The British Sociological Association (BSA), founded in 1951, is the national learned society for sociology, affiliated as such with the International Sociological Association. Starting when sociology was hardly institutionalized as a distinct discipline within British universities, it expanded rapidly as sociology expanded, and has developed a wide range of functions. (These do not, however, as in some professional associations, include the certification of disciplinary qualifications.) It both organizes activities for sociologists and represents their intellectual and practical interests in the wider society. It is now formally registered as a charity, with the objective of promoting sociology.
Capitalism
Authors: Delacroix Jacques
Published: September 2017

Capital is anything of value, such as money, put to work to produce revenue. Capitalism is the organizing principle of any society that relies on market forces and private parties, as opposed to tradition or to government action, to put wealth to work on a systematic basis (rather than incidentally or intermittently).
Chicago School
Authors: Hutchison Ray
Published: September 2017

The Chicago School of Urban Sociology refers to work of faculty and graduate students at the University of Chicago during the period 1915–35. This small group of scholars (the full‐time faculty in the department of sociology never numbered more than 6 persons) developed a new sociological theory and research methodology in a conscious effort to create a science of society using the city of Chicago as a social laboratory. The Chicago School continues to define the contours of urban sociology, most clearly in the contributions of urban ecology and applied research within the urban environment.
Conspicuous Consumption
Authors: Schor Juliet B.
Published: September 2017

The term conspicuous consumption entered the sociological lexicon via Thorstein Veblen's biting analysis of the spending patterns of the rich and
nouveau riches
in the late nineteenth century.
The Theory of the Leisure Class
(1899) is an account of how these groups spent enormous energy and money constructing an ostentatious style of life. They built and decorated ornate homes, adorned their persons with clothing and jewelry, designed elaborate carriages, and employed large numbers of servants dressed in expensive uniforms. Throughout, the principles of waste, luxury, and ornamentation ruled the choices they made. The motive that animated their efforts was the desire for social esteem, which itself was dependent on the possession of wealth. But having money was not enough. It must be put $@#*^%#@#ldquo;in evidence,$@#*^%#@#rdquor; or become conspicuous. Because these are ongoing features of wealth$@#*^%#@#hyphen;based status systems, the concept of conspicuousness continues to be important long after the Veblenian era has passed.
Consumption, Tourism and
Authors: Germann Molz Jennie
Published: September 2017

Practices of tourism and consumption, and recent sociological interest in the relationship between them, have evolved as part of a broader shift within western societies from production‐centered capitalism, with its focus on work and the conditions of labor, to consumer capitalism, with its emphasis on leisure, image, taste, style, and consumption. In fact, many sociologists consider tourism to be emblematic of the contemporary consumer culture that has emerged over the past century in western post‐industrial societies.
Consumption, Visual
Authors: Schroeder Jonathan E.
Published: September 2017

Visual consumption characterizes life in the digital age – the computer, the Internet, and visual media structure twenty‐first‐century lives, commanding time and attention, providing a steady stream of images that appear to present the world to the consumer. Encompassing not only visual‐oriented consumer behavior such as watching television, interacting with social media, playing video games, bird watching, tourism, museum going, or window‐shopping, visual consumption also introduces a methodological framework to investigate the interstices of consumption, vision, and culture, including how visual images are handled by consumption studies. Visual consumption constitutes a key attribute of an experience economy organized around attention, in which strategic communication – including advertising, promotion, Web sites, retail environments, and digital media – incorporates visual images designed to capture attention, build brand names, create mindshare, produce attractive products and services, and persuade citizens, consumers, and voters.
Cooley, Charles Horton (1864–1929)
Authors: Schubert Hans‐Joachim
Published: September 2017

Charles Horton Cooley was a prominent member of the founding generation of American sociologists. Named a full professor of sociology at the University of Michigan in 1907, he was then elected president of the American Sociological Association in 1918. It was his aim and achievement to apply the ideas of pragmatism to the development of a sociological theory of social action, social order, and social change, which he ultimately accomplished with his trilogy (Cooley 1963, 1964, 1966).
Criminology
Authors: Brown Stephen E.
Published: September 2017

Criminology is the study of crime and related phenomena. A common starting point in defining criminology is to cite Edwin Sutherland's (1883–1950) tripartite definition of it as an examination of the process of creating laws, violation of laws, and reacting to those violations. While this is a relatively broad definition, it is not all encompassing. Moreover, while Sutherland's status in the field of criminology was enormous, his definition of the bounds of criminology intentionally excluded a litany of perspectives. This controversy over the parameters of criminology has always plagued the discipline. To appreciate the challenge of defining criminology to the satisfaction of a highly diverse population of scholars of crime and related phenomena, it is essential to identify a multitude of issues that divide criminologists into various camps.
Culture
Authors: Spillman Lyn
Published: September 2017

Although the idea of culture seems commonplace and indispensable for thinking about human groups and human action, the term has resonated for more than a century with a variety of sometimes dissonant connotations (Kroeber & Kluckhohn 1963; Williams 1976; Smelser 1992). In vernacular usage, it may refer either to all the symbols, meanings, and values shared by members of a group, by contrast to other groups; or else to a specialized realm of expressive activities and artifacts contrasted with other institutional realms, like politics or the economy. Cultural sociologists now encompass both commonsense meanings of the term by treating as “culture” all socially located forms and processes of human
meaning‐making
, whether or not they occur in specialized institutions, and whether or not they are confined to one clearly bounded group.
Culture Jamming
Authors: Handelman Jay M. , Kozinets Robert V. , Mitchell Alexander
Published: September 2017

Culture jamming refers to an organized, social activist effort that uses inverted, similar broadcast techniques to counter mass media messages that support the current technocapitalist system. Culture jammers often target issues such as the social equality, materialism, and environmental problems of technocapitalism, and they are often embroiled in debates around freedom of speech and expression. The concern may be related to Jürgen Habermas, for whom an ideal speech situation is one in which all participants within a public space are empowered to reach consensus on issues of mutual importance through engagement in symmetrical discourse (Habermas, 1985). What motivates activists engaged in culture jamming, however, is a view that contemporary communications are distorted by the power of media companies. Here activists regard symmetrical public discourse as being eroded by corporately controlled mass media that have come to serve as a culturally omnipresent venue through which corporate‐sponsored advertising shapes a logic of consumption. Culture jamming, then, is the attempt by activists to break through this corporate‐controlled, distorted, asymmetrical public discourse that has led to a hegemonic cultural logic whereby consumption comes to permeate all aspects of lived experience (Rumbo, 2002).
Culture and Movements
Authors: Williams Rhys H.
Published: September 2017

“Culture,” in its various manifestations, has been increasingly useful to the understanding of social movements. The sociology of social movements has focused on culture and its role in three basic sets of issues: explanation of social movement formation and emergence; the processes and dynamics that allow movements to sustain their actions over time; and the impact movements have on their wider social contexts.
Economic Determinism
Authors: (Hans) Bakker J. I.
Published: September 2017

The concept of economic determinism refers to monocausal determinism by material, economic factors. The idea is often associated with Karl Marx's “historical materialism,” but it is not clear that Marx himself was a strict economic determinist, or even a materialist (Gouldner

; Simmel

[1900]; Landry

). The Romantic strain in the work of the early Marx did not disappear entirely, which is evident in terms of his view of species being and the teleology of communism. Some commentators differentiate between economic determinism and dialectical materialism, where dialectical materialism allows for more flexibility and may even include a feedback mechanism. Rigid versions of economic determinism are often associated with Marxist‐Leninism and Stalinism. In Marxist parlance, the forces of production determine the relations of production in any mode of production. Sometimes that statement is modified to include the disclaimer that such economic determinism is only true in the final analysis. But precisely what “in the final analysis” means is rarely specified exactly. Closely related is the concept of economic reductionism (Robertson & White

: 355–7), where emphasis is placed on the idea that the economy is closely intertwined with all forms of the culture of consumerism. Thus, for example, advertising images can be viewed as ideological constructs that are the product of economic forces working on decision‐makers in corporations. Concern with capitalist globalization has been premised in part on the theory that economic globalization is determinative of all aspects of civil society, not just consumption. Studies of the origins of the “capitalist world system” have moved the classical Marxist argument about economic determinism from relations of production within nation‐states to a global arena that involves the interaction among societies. Wallerstein (

) “emphasized the causal significance of economic‐material factors, relegating other aspects of epiphenomenal status” (Robertson & White

: 357). There are also counterarguments which stress “civilizational” or “cultural” factors as determinative (e.g., Huntington

). Weber's 1904–6 thesis (

: 125) concerning the Protestant ethic is often misinterpreted as a one‐sided idealist argument, but he explicitly points out that it is not his intention to replace a one‐sided economic determinism with an equally misleading, one‐sided idealist (ideological‐cultural) determinism. There are few sociological writers who take a strictly economic determinist view, but there is a strong movement to go beyond the labor theory of value and classical and neoclassical economics models and to recognize the importance of multivariant and reciprocal social factors within economic institutions.
Emotions and Social Movements
Authors: Yang Guobin
Published: September 2017

Emotions are spontaneous, self‐induced, or externally produced self‐feelings. Examples include positive feelings of love, loyalty, pride, joy, and enthusiasm and negative feelings of hatred, sympathy, fear, anger, sorrow, sadness, jealousy, shame, and dejection. Emotions are both embodied and take symbolic forms. A sense of anger or joy has tell‐tale somatic signs; often, it finds symbolic expression in voice, gestures, words, and tones, not to mention literary and artistic forms.
Faletto, Enzo (1935–2003)
Authors: Ramírez Ricardo Gamboa
Published: September 2017

Enzo Doménico Faletto Verné was born in Chile in 1935 and died in Santiago de Chile on July 22, 2003. He studied history in the Faculty of Philosophy and Education at the University of Chile and received an MA in sociology at the Latin American Faculty of Social Studies (FLACSO). Faletto must be considered as a representative of social sciences and humanities in Latin America, two disciplines which achieved the peak of their development in the early 1970s.
Globalization
Authors: Ray Larry
Published: September 2017

Globalization has become one of the central but contested concepts of contemporary social science. The term has further entered everyday commentary and analysis and features in many political, cultural, and economic debates. The globalized world order originates in the international organizations and regulatory systems set up after World War II – including the United Nations, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the World Trade Organization), the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. However, the end of the Cold War was the prelude to the maturity of the concept of globalization, since after 1989, it was possible at least to imagine a “borderless” world in which people, goods, ideas, and images would flow with relative ease and
the
major global division between East and West had gone. A world divided by competing ideologies of capitalism and state socialism gave way to a more uncertain world in which capitalism became the dominant economic and social system. Coinciding with these changes, a major impetus to globalization was the development and availability of digital communication technologies from the late 1980s with dramatic consequences for the way economic and personal behavior were conducted. The collapse of communism and growth of digital technologies further coincided with a global restructuring of the state, finance, production, and consumption associated with neoliberalism.
Goldman, Emma (1869–1940)
Authors: Sandefur Melissa , MacLean Vicky M.
Published: September 2017

Emma Goldman was a social and political writer, revolutionary activist, and one of the most accomplished speakers in American history. Goldman was a proponent of individualistic anarchism, which she described as the philosophy and theory that government and man‐made laws are intrinsically coercive and harmful to individual liberty (Goldman 1969). Her commitment to anarchism and to the ideal of freedom led her to champion the causes of labor, anti‐militarism, freedom of religion, prison reform, and sexual and reproductive freedom. Her most important contributions to political and social thought include the incorporation of sexual politics into anarchism and her many essays on contemporary issues such as education, birth control, women's emancipation, modern drama, national chauvinism, and crime. A passionate feminist, Goldman believed that a purely political solution was not the answer to inequality between the sexes, but that equality would come only from a massive transformation of values and from women themselves.
Grounded Theory
Authors: Charmaz Kathy , Belgrave Linda Liska
Published: September 2017

Grounded theory is a general methodology with systematic guidelines for gathering and analyzing data to generate middle‐range theory. The name “grounded theory” mirrors its fundamental premise that researchers can and should develop theory from rigorous analyses of empirical data. The analytic process consists of coding data; developing, checking, and integrating theoretical categories; and writing analytic narratives throughout inquiry. Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss (1967), the originators of grounded theory, first proposed that researchers should engage in simultaneous data collection and analysis, which has become a routine practice in qualitative research. From the beginning of the research process, the researcher codes the data, compares data and codes, 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.
Hegemony and the Media
Authors: Harris Dave
Published: September 2017

Before it was applied to academic analysis of the media, the term “hegemony” referred more generally to indirect political control, which often replaced the need for constant and direct military or political domination of the kind exercised, for example, by colonial states over rivals or by dominant groups within a nation‐state.
Help‐Seeking
Authors: Pescosolido Bernice A.
Published: September 2017

Help‐seeking refers to efforts or actions which assist individuals with physical, mental, or emotional behaviors perceived as out of the ordinary. Whilst this term is often used interchangeably with service utilization, healthcare decision‐making, or health/illness behavior, several factors differentiate the concept of help‐seeking from the others. These factors may include societal influence, legal coercion, and the use of alternative therapies.
Identity Control Theory
Authors: Burke Peter J.
Published: September 2017

Identity control theory (ICT) focuses on the nature of persons’ identities (who they are) and the relationship between the persons’ identities and their behavior within the context of the social structure within which the identities are embedded. ICT grows out of identity theory (Stryker 1994; Stryker & Burke 2000) and structural symbolic interaction theory more generally (Stryker 1980). Central to all of these theories, including the symbolic interaction perspective, is the idea that behavior is premised on a named and classified world and that people in society name each other and themselves in terms of the positions they occupy. Further, these positional labels or names and the expectations attached to them become internalized as the identities that make up the self. These self labels thus define persons in terms of positions in society and these positions carry the shared behavioral expectations. Further, these positions, conventionally labeled roles and groups, are relational in the sense that they tie individuals together. For example, with respect to roles, father is tied to son or daughter; with respect to groups, the in‐group is related to the out‐group and in‐group members are related to other in‐group members. This is reflective of William James's (1890) notion that people have as many selves as they have relationships to others. Thus, through their identities, people are intimately tied to the social structure.
Institution
Authors: Henning Christoph
Published: September 2017

An institution is the fixing of stereotyped social interactions in the form of rules. In most cases these rules are made explicit and there are sanctioning mechanisms behind them. Yet sometimes these characteristics are absent, for example when people adhere to such rules simply because they feel urged to act in this way. An institution does not need to be a large organization. The largest institutions known are states or multinational organizations like the United Nations, yet there are also much smaller institutions, as for example marriage or monthly meetings of a group at a certain pub. Therefore, institutionalization is not a matter of size.
Intergenerational Mobility: Methods of Analysis
Authors: Luijkx Ruud
Published: September 2017

This entry comprises an analysis of intergenerational mobility, and in particular mobility tables, in which parents' and children's positions are cross‐classified. These positions can refer to the level of educational achievement, earnings, occupational position, religious denomination, social class, and so on. Intergenerational class mobility (social mobility) involves the class of the family in which respondents lived when young (the origin class) and their current class position (the destination class).
Love and Commitment
Authors: Forest Amanda L. , Frieze Irene Hanson
Published: September 2017

Love is one of the most basic human emotions. Many have written about love experiences, both in popular writing and in more scholarly publications, especially as they apply to romantic relationships. As these writings indicate, there are many ways of thinking about love. Some of the types of love identified by researchers are reviewed below. Research about why people choose one person over another to date or to marry also provides information about love.
Mass Culture and Mass Society
Authors: Perry Nick
Published: September 2017

“Mass culture” typically refers to that culture which emerges from the centralized production processes of the mass media. It should be noted, however, that the status of the term is the subject of ongoing challenges – as in Swingewood's (1977) identification of it as a myth. When it is linked to the notion of mass society, then it becomes a specific variant of a more general theme; namely, the relation between social meanings and the allocation of life chances and social resources. Considered as a repository of social meaning, mass culture is one of a group of terms that also includes high (or elite) culture, avant‐garde culture, folk culture, popular culture, and (subsequently) postmodern culture. The interpretation and boundaries of each of these categories are routinely the subject of debate and dispute. This becomes particularly evident in attempts at ostensive definition (i.e., the citation of examples of each term and the reasoning employed to justify their allocation to the category in question). In combination, these concepts constitute a system of differences, such that a change in the meaning of any one of its terms is explicable through, and by, it's changing relation to the others. Those same terms frequently function as evaluative categories that – either tacitly or explicitly – incorporate judgments about the quality of that which they affect to describe.
Metatheory
Authors: Ritzer George
Published: September 2017

A metatheory is a broad perspective that overarches two, or more, theories. There are many metatheories – positivism, post‐positivism, hermeneutics, and so on – of importance in sociology and other social sciences. Two of the best known and most important are methodological holism and methodological individualism. Methodological holism takes as its basic unit of analysis, and focuses most of its attention on, “social wholes” such as social structures, social institutions, imperatively coordinated associations, and capitalism. It overarches such large‐scale, macro‐level theories as structural functionalism, conflict theory, and some varieties of neo‐Marxian theory. Methodological individualism takes as its unit of analysis and focal concern individual‐level phenomena such as the mind, self, action, accounts, behavior, rational action, and so on. It overarches a series of micro‐level theories such as symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, exchange theory, and rational choice theory. There is a third, methodological relationism, that concerns itself with the relationship between social wholes and social individuals and overarches a series of theories that arose mainly in the 1980s to compensate for the micro‐ and macro‐extremism of the two extant metatheories. Methodological relationism encompasses a number of largely American micro–macro theories and more European agency–structure theories.
Multiculturalism
Authors: Modood Tariq
Published: September 2017

Multiculturalism or the political accommodation of minorities became a major demand in the last quarter of the twentieth century, filling some of the space that accommodation of the working classes occupied for a century or more earlier. It thus constitutes powerful, if diverse, intellectual challenges in several parts of the humanities and social sciences, with profound political ramifications. Nevertheless, by the early years of the twenty‐first century it was in theoretical and practical disarray over the accommodation of Muslims in the West.
Music and Media
Authors: Schneider Christopher J.
Published: September 2017

Popular music is a basic part of culture in the United States and much of the world. Music in the broadest sense is not clearly definable. When considering the significance and impact of the media in the modern world, developing a concrete definition becomes more problematic. Definitional concerns are most apparent when music is discussed or thought of in a “universal sense” (music as the universal language). Nevertheless, music can be generally understood as the human temporal organization of sounds that differentiate such sounds from noise, speech, and so on. Modern developments that accompany changes in the ways in which music is produced and consumed can be attributed directly to the media. Generally, use of the term media refers to the ability to disseminate information to a wide variety of people. For centuries this process was accomplished exclusively through the circulation of printed materials, most notably newspapers; however, more recently this also includes radio, television, and the Internet.
Mobile Interface Theory
Authors: Farman Jason
Published: September 2017

Mobile interface theory is an approach to studying the everyday practices of mobile devices and the roles these devices play in the production of embodied space. This approach draws predominantly from the theories found in phenomenology and poststructuralism, finding meaningful places where these theories intersect and inform a study of bodies, spaces, and mobile technologies. The result is termed the “sensory‐inscribed” body in a mobile media age (Farman 2012).
Neoconservatism
Authors: Gamble Andrew
Published: September 2017

Neoconservatism is a particular variant of American conservatism. The label was first applied in the 1970s to a group of dissident liberal intellectuals around particular journals such as the
Public Interest
and
Commentary
. They included Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Daniel Bell, and Seymour Martin Lipset. Unlike the term neoliberal, the neoconservatives adopted the label with enthusiasm, describing it as a persuasion rather than as a faction. As an important if small intellectual elite, they became a component of the growing conservative movement in America through the 1980s and 1990s. Some neoconservatives were influential in the Reagan administration, but they appeared to be in decline in the 1990s. Nevertheless, several neoconservatives were appointed to significant posts in the George W. Bush administration, and speculation on the influence of neoconservatism on the policies of the administration after 9/11, particularly the war against Iraq, mounted.
Population and Development
Authors: McDonald Peter
Published: September 2017

While development can include a wide range of meanings, here development is taken to mean economic development defined to refer narrowly to economic growth, and then more broadly to the economic transformations leading to the emergence of modern economic institutions and practices and the disappearance of traditional forms. The processes of development are associated, both as cause and consequence, with population processes.
Psychoanalysis
Authors: Movahedi Siamak
Published: September 2017

Freud defined psychoanalysis as a form of therapy, a mode of observation and inquiry, and a theory of psychic functioning. However, his passion lay primarily in psychoanalysis as a mode of scientific investigation. Psychoanalytic theory is based on Freud's image of the individual and his notion of psychic reality. The individual is presented as profane, irrational, self‐deceptive, narcissistic, power hungry, and the slave of the most primitive desires. This is the image of the decentered man, and is perhaps one reason for Freud's popularity among postmodernists.
Practice Theory
Authors: Reckwitz Andreas
Published: September 2017

The label “practice theory” refers to a group of approaches in late twentieth‐century social and cultural theory which highlights the routinized and performative character of action, its dependence on tacit knowledge and implicit understanding. Besides, these approaches emphasize the “material” character of action and culture as anchored in embodiment and networks of artifacts. Practice theory has its roots in anti‐intellectualist and anti‐dualist social philosophy, above all in Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger. In contemporary social theory, the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Theodore Schatzki, Anthony Giddens, Harold Garfinkel, and others contain diverse forms of practice theory. In a broad sense, the approaches of Bruno Latour and Judith Butler, and partly also that of Michel Foucault, comprise praxeological ideas as well. Currently, practice‐theoretical frameworks influence a wide range of empirical analyses in sociology and cultural studies, from gender studies to organizational and science studies, which analyze social structures from the point of view of “doing” culture (organization, gender, subjects, etc.).
Pragmatic acculturation
Authors: Quah Stella R.
Published: September 2017

Pragmatic acculturation refers to “the cultural system of behavior and attitudes that allows and often encourages culture‐borrowing or the adoption of aspects of non‐native cultures for the purpose of satisfying specific needs” (Quah 1989: 6). It refers to a person's or group's borrowing ways of thinking (ideas) and ways of doing things (procedures) from other cultures to solve specific problems. Pragmatic acculturation is usually but not exclusively found in ethnically plural societies and it is conceptually different from acculturation or assimilation usually defined as “the process by which an outsider, immigrant, or subordinate group becomes indistinguishably integrated into the dominant host society” (Marshall 1996: 20; Kovacks & Cropley 1975: 10). In contrast to acculturation, the notion of “culture borrowing” in pragmatic acculturation is more than just a “movement of things among societies”; it encompasses patterns of behavior and attitudes. The concept pragmatic acculturation in comparative sociological research contributes to an effective understanding of the permeability of cultural boundaries and its effect on various aspects of social life; of the permanent or temporary transformation in belief systems; and of the way cultural beliefs and norms influence accounts of social life processes and events such as work productivity, governance styles, or disease incidence and prevalence across communities and countries.
Rape Culture
Authors: Williams Joyce
Published: September 2017

Rape culture is a concept of unknown origin and of uncertain definition; yet it has made its way into everyday vocabulary and is assumed to be commonly understood. The award‐winning documentary film
Rape Culture
made by Margaret Lazarus in 1975 takes credit for first defining the concept. The film's narration relies heavily on jargon such as “rapism” and “phallocentric society” and is more illustrative than definitive in dealing with rape as depicted in movies, music, and other forms of entertainment. Authors of the popular
Transforming a Rape Culture
define the phenomenon as “a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women … a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent” (Buchwald et al. 1993: v). An earlier definition was offered by Herman (1984), who characterized the US as a rape culture because the image of heterosexual sex is based on a model of aggressive male and passive female. At the other end of the continuum of definitions are efforts to define a rape culture empirically, such as are found in the work of Baron and Straus (1989) and Ellis (1989). Some empirical works on rape theorize its emanation from a subculture of violence, for example societies with high homicide rates also tend to have high rape rates (Amir 1971; Baron & Straus 1989). Other researchers have stressed that social settings such as created by some male gangs or fraternities produce rape‐prone subcultures (Boswell & Spade 1996; Sanday 1996). Clearly, rape is more common and acceptable in some environments than in others. However, the concept of rape culture inextricably connects rape with the cultural fabric of the
whole
of society.
Second Demographic Transition
Authors: Lesthaeghe Ron J.
Published: September 2017

The first or “classic” demographic transition refers to the historical declines in mortality and fertility, as witnessed from the eighteenth century onward in several European populations, and continuing at present in most developing countries. The end point of the first demographic transition (FDT) was supposed to be an older stationary and stable population corresponding with replacement fertility (i.e., just over two children on average), zero population growth, and life expectancies higher that 70 years. As there would be an ultimate balance between deaths and births, there would be no “demographic” need for sustained immigration. Moreover, households in all parts of the world would converge toward the nuclear and conjugal types, composed of married couples and their offspring.
Shadow Work (Ivan Illich)
Authors: Harney Nicholas DeMaria
Published: September 2017

Shadow Work
(1981), written by the polymath ex‐Catholic priest Ivan Illich (1926–2002), critiques what Illich sees as the contrived structures of desire present in modern commodity‐intensive society. Shadow work refers to the “unpaid servitude” modern people tolerate to satisfy the desires experts suggest they need.
Shadow Work
extends his earlier critiques of the way institutions and professions in the modern industrialized world dehumanize by creating needs and controlling the satisfaction of those needs. In a series of polemical books written in the 1970s, Illich argued that there was a tendency for institutions to develop in ways opposite to their original intent. For example, in
Deschooling Society
(1973) he argued that contemporary educational practices discouraged learning, and in
Medical Nemesis
(1976) care was neglected by the organizational imperatives of medical experts and institutions. He developed the principle of counterproductivity to label the transformation of a potentially positive ideal into a negative institutional arrangement because of the undesired externalities that came with the process of institutionalization. Illich was concerned with how technological advancement and “development” might work to destroy convivial human relationships, the human spirit, and the environment. In addition to critiquing modern institutions, experts, and expert knowledge, Illich critiqued the commodification of activities, transforming, for example, knowledge and learning into a possession rather than a way of being in the world.
Social Capital and Health
Authors: Little Craig B.
Published: September 2017

Social capital, according to the most widely accepted definition, refers to “features of social life – networks, norms and trust – that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives” (Putnam 1996: 56). Communities characterized by high levels of social capital have been hypothesized to benefit from lower crime rates, higher educational achievement, greater economic growth, and better health. Social capital generally incorporates the much older concepts of civic virtue and social cohesion. Research linking social cohesion and health dates back at least a century to Durkheim who demonstrated that populations with higher social integration have lower rates of suicide. Social theorists whose work serves as the foundation for the present interest in social capital include Pierre Bourdieu, James Coleman, and Robert Putnam. The appearance of social capital as a key word in research articles is relatively infrequent prior to 1980 and has grown enormously since the mid‐1990s.
Social Comparison Theory
Authors: Miller Monica K. , Flores David
Published: September 2017

Comparisons with other people play a significant role in social life, as they provide meaning and self‐relevant knowledge. How people view their own circumstances, abilities, and behaviors varies according to the types of social comparisons they make. Although in his seminal work Leon Festinger (1954) did not offer a precise definition of social comparison, it is generally conceptualized as the process of thinking about the self in relation to other people. Individuals frequently make social comparisons because no objective comparison information is available; however, when both social and objective information is available, people are often more influenced by social information, as it is frequently more diagnostic than objective information. Further, many researchers believe that comparisons may be with real or imagined others, and do not require personal contact or conscious thought. Comparisons can also be made between one's own social group and another social group. Although comparison information can be encountered naturally in one's environment, most research has studied the types of comparisons that participants seek out intentionally.
Social Comparison
Authors: Miller Monica K. , Reichert Jenny , Flores David
Published: September 2017

Comparisons with other people play a significant role in social life, as they provide meaning and self‐relevant knowledge. How people view their own circumstances, abilities, and behaviors varies according to the types of social comparisons they make. Although in his seminal work Festinger (1954) did not offer a precise definition of social comparison, it is generally conceptualized as the process of thinking about the self in relation to other people. Individuals frequently make social comparisons because no objective comparison information is available. However, even when both social and objective information is available, people are often more influenced by social information, as it is frequently more diagnostic. Further, comparisons can be with real or imagined others, and do not require personal contact or conscious thought. Comparisons can also be made between one's own social group and another social group. Although comparison information can be encountered naturally in one's environment, people often intentionally seek out comparisons.
Social Distance
Authors: Williams Joyce E.
Published: September 2017

Use of the concept of social distance dates back to Georg Simmel's discussion of the stranger in his
Soziologie
(1923). According to Simmel, the stranger represents the union of newness and remoteness as he moves out of one social circle and strives for acceptance in another. Robert Park (1924) popularized the concept of social distance as the grades and degrees of understanding and intimacy that characterize personal and social relations. Social distance is based on social norms that differentiate individuals and groups on the basis of race/ethnicity, age, sex, social class, religion, and nationality. The greater the social distance between individuals and groups, the less they influence each other.
Social Movements, Strain and Breakdown Theories of
Authors: Buechler Steven M.
Published: September 2017

Strain and breakdown theories seek to explain the causes of collective behavior and social movements. They implicitly presume that when social institutions are stable, collective behavior is unlikely. It is when institutions undergo strain or breakdown that the resulting social disorganization and decreased social control are more likely to foster collective behavior in the form of fads, crazes, riots, rebellions, movements, and revolutions.
Socialization and Sport
Authors: Coakley Jay
Published: September 2017

There is a long tradition of research on socialization and sport. The roots of this research are grounded in theories that explain the role of play in child development, in progressive‐era notions that team sports constituted an environment in which valuable lessons could be learned, and in popular twentieth‐century assumptions that playing sports was an inherently character‐building experience.
Socialized Medicine
Authors: Nettleton Sarah
Published: September 2017

Socialized medicine is a system of health care delivery in which care is provided as a state‐supported service. The term was introduced in 1954 by an American academic – Almont Lindsay – on a study visit to the United Kingdom. On his return to the US, he published a book called
Socialized Medicine in England and Wales
(Lindsay 1962), describing the history, organization, and structure of the National Health Service (NHS). However, the term “socialized medicine” is one that tends to be used by “observers” (particularly North American observers) of the UK health service and it is less commonly heard within the UK itself (Webster 2002: 1). This may be because the British NHS is considered by many analysts to be a unique example of socialized medicine. Indeed, it is often described as “a socialist island in a capitalist sea.” In this respect it forms part of a welfare system which rests on collective provision, social justice, social equality, and democracy in order to mitigate the adverse effects of capitalism. The fundamental principles of the NHS are therefore: that it should be publicly funded (predominantly by taxation); health care should be universal and be provided on the basis of health “need” rather than the ability to pay; and services should be comprehensive in that they should include preventive health services as well as treatment for those who are ill.
Subjectivity
Authors: Boon Vivienne
Published: September 2017

In sociology, subjectivity is often positioned as the opposite of objectivity, with objectivity being the ideal to which all empirical sociology should aspire. When Auguste Comte coined the phrase sociology, he had in mind the objective study of human behavior according to rational principles. A pertinent example of objective sociological analysis is that of Émile Durkheim, who argued that sociologists should analyze the internal (and impersonal) causes of social phenomena through the observation of concrete facts. Another notable example is, of course, the scholarship of Karl Marx, who also believed in a form of social scientism that went beyond the surface of social life through the analysis of concrete social facts. Durkheim distinguished this analysis from philosophical introspection and generalizations that would be unduly affected by subjective influences such as beliefs and values (Giddens 1993; Crow 2005).
Taste, Sociology of
Authors: Gronow Jukka
Published: September 2017

The importance of taste as a sociological concept was emphatically pointed out by Pierre Bourdieu. In his sociology, probably more than anywhere else, taste is a central theoretical concept of analysis. By distinguishing between good and bad, tasteful and tasteless, beautiful and ugly, taste classifies and orders the natural and social world. By taste one classifies oneself and is classified by others. Understood in this way, the sociological concept of taste shares many important features with its predecessor in classical philosophical aesthetics, the power of judgment. In this capacity, taste does not just refer either to individual preferences or dispositions (the term used by Bourdieu), or to some standards used in making choices in consumption. It is an important concept in bridging the gap between an individual's choices and his or her socially shared preferences or habits. In addition, it can refer to more or less automatic responses as well as to highly reflective acts of judgment, and to behavioral responses which share both these aspects at the same time.
Theory
Authors: Markovsky Barry
Published: September 2017

There are many different views in sociology about what theory is and what it should be. Many of these views are complementary, referring to different aspects of the process of theorizing, or to particular qualities that are more or less emphasized by different theorists. Some views are so disparate, however, as to be mutually incompatible, even while achieving legitimacy within mutually exclusive streams of sociological work. The purpose here is not to critically evaluate sociology's various theories and approaches, but rather to provide a short overview of some of the major strands of theoretical work. The approach will be to present several dimensions along which sociological theories have varied.