bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Media, Network(s) and
Authors: Austrin Terry , Farnsworth John
Published: September 2017

Networks have been described as one of the most significant features of the modern world. So central and pervasive are they that Manuel Castells (2009), for instance, has dubbed contemporary society the “network society.” Clearly, media are central to a network society. Yet this raises the question of which kinds of media? Traditionally, they have been broadcast or electronic media. However, these forms have been overtaken by the rise of digital media. Digital media, in turn, have increasingly reconfigured every aspect of communication in two ways. First, in the kind of information that can be transmitted across networks; second, in redefining how we understand networks, not just as social networks but as sociotechnical networks. Consequently, the online stream of text, images, sound, and data packages reworks the notions of what is meant by public or private domains, of how two‐way, multiple or asynchronous interactions are managed, of whether exchanges are human or technological, and much else; even how networks themselves are constituted. All these underlie contemporary social media – Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, search engines, cloud computing or peer‐to‐peer sharing. Media networks, when digital media are included, have become increasingly foundational to the way modern societies not only function but understand themselves.
Media and Sport
Authors: Bruce Toni
Published: September 2017

In the twenty‐first century, it is almost impossible to escape the sports media. Mediated versions of sports events saturate the popular landscape via television, newspapers, magazines, video games, and the Internet. Billions of television viewers watch global events such as the soccer and rugby world cups and the Olympics. Television has helped to transform sport to the point where broadcasters often dictate the constitution of specific competitions, rules and game times are regularly shifted to fit broadcast schedules, and advertisers pay huge sums to associate themselves with televised sports events. However, despite a long history of interdependence between sport and the media, the sociological analysis of the sports media has a relatively short history, and several significant areas remain underresearched.
Medical Sociology and Genetics
Authors: Dingwall Robert
Published: September 2017

Medical sociology is concerned with genetics in two main ways: its explanations of human behavior and its impact on the health sector. Over the last decade, developments in genetics have attracted considerable interest from medical sociologists, as they affect a wide range of topics within the discipline, such as deviance, health provision, and patient–professional interaction and technology.
Mendieta y Núñez, Lucio (1895–1988)
Authors: Serrano Margarita Olvera
Published: September 2017

Research about the disciplinary past of sociology in Mexico is a field of study that has consolidated significantly in the last 20 years. At the theoretical and methodological level, such consolidation has involved a contemporary reinterpretation of the available sources. It also has involved an incorporation of theory of history and historiography, as well as a revaluation of the legacy of the antecessors of sociology at a local level, who were frequently unacknowledged, forgotten, or undervalued. One of these figures is, paradoxically, the most important leader of the early period of institutionalization of this specialized discipline, as well as its dominant figure over more than 25 years (1939–1965): Lucio Mendieta y Núñez.
Micro‐Macro Links
Authors: Turner Jonathan , Markovsky Barry
Published: September 2017

Macrosociology addresses large‐scale phenomena such as institutional systems, whereas microsociology deals with smaller‐scale phenomena such as interpersonal behavior. Over the years, the theoretical agendas of macrosociology and microsociology have developed almost independently of one another. For some time, the issue of how to link these disparate levels of analysis – or how to close what is often termed the “micro‐macro gap” – has been debated within theoretical sociology.
Microsociology
Authors: Scheff Thomas J.
Published: September 2017

The basic idea of microsociology is to fill in the human detail missing from abstract representations of human beings and their societies. The endeavor begins by describing, second by second, the structure/process of social life. The goal is to show the reciprocal relationship between these events and the nature of the society in which they occur, how each causes the other. There have been three main approaches: ethnographic, experimental, and linguistic.
Migration and the Labor Force
Authors: Orcutt Duleep Harriet , Main Regan
Published: September 2017

The labor force includes those who work and those who are unemployed but wish to work. It is typically defined for a nation as a whole, or for a demographic or geographic subgroup within a nation. Migration is the movement of people across borders. If the borders are within a country, the migration is called internal or domestic migration, or simply migration. If the borders divide countries, it is international migration, with “immigration” denoting people entering a country and “emigration” denoting their exit. Social scientists’ interest in internal versus international migration has waxed and waned with the ebbs and flows of immigration. When US immigration was severely restricted in the 1920s, the study of immigration lost its luster; after the restrictions were lifted in the 1960s, it reemerged as a hot topic.
Mills,C.Wright (1916–1962)
Authors: Dandaneau Steven P.
Published: September 2017

C. Wright Mills is perhaps the most recognized figure in the history of American sociology. Mills is to American sociology as Margaret Mead is to American anthropology. Mills was prolific, provocative, and prescient. The author of, not one, but three of American sociology's most influential and debated books –White Collar(1951),The Power Elite(1956), andThe Sociological Imagination(1959) – Mills's scholarly oeuvre is a veritable microcosm of American sociology's distinctive character. Likewise, Mills's political writings remain partisan touchstones for social critics and citizens grappling with the baleful consequences of the postmodern society that Mills was among the first to glimpse at its inception, but did not live to fully decipher. A hero to some, a villain to others, the name C. Wright Mills evokes passion, for no one before or since has more fully embodied, nor more courageously battled, American sociology and its self‐imposed gods and demons.
Mobility, Horizontal and Vertical
Authors: Ultee Wout
Published: September 2017

The notion that in contemporary highly industrialized societies persons may climb up or slide down the social ladder presupposed some scale with an upper end and a lower end and the possibility of ranking people on it. Individual income can be taken as such a scale, and if this is used it is possible to speak of upward and downward mobility and to quantify the extent to which a person is upwardly or downwardly mobile. Occupational status, as indicated by the prestige accorded to occupations in surveys involving representative samples from a country's population, also makes it possible to ascertain mobility. In these cases a sociologist speaks of
vertical
mobility.
Money
Authors: Dodd Nigel
Published: September 2017

The sociology of money is a new and thriving field. Significant theoretical contributions to a sociological understanding of money were made by Marx, Simmel, and Weber, among others. While Weber focused primarily on the legal status of money – he broadly agreed with Knapp's characterization of money as a “creature of the state” – Marx and Simmel undertook extensive investigations into the nature of money as a medium. According to Marx, money is a commodity, and its quantitative relationship to other commodities – its function as a “universal measure of value” – is made possible by the amount of labor‐time that it contains. This is true not only of precious metals but also of other forms of “credit” money, such as banknotes, which derive their value from a commodity such as gold. Thus, to view exchange relations merely as “monetary” relations or as a series of prices determined by supply and demand is to overlook the social relations of production – and, of course, exploitation – on which they fundamentally depend. Simmel took a quite different view of the value of money. By his reckoning, money represents an abstract idea of value that is underwritten by “society”: its value, in other words, ultimately depends on a form of trust in society that Simmel likened to “quasi‐religious faith.” On the basis of the characterization, Simmel explored the roots and consequences of the development of the “mature money economy,” whereby an increasing number of social relationships are mediated by money.
Mortality: Transitions and Measures
Authors: Elo Irma T.
Published: September 2017

In the course of human history, life expectancy at birth has increased from around 20–30 years during prehistoric times to 75–80 years in many low‐mortality countries today. Nearly half of this decline has taken place during the twentieth century. In the middle of the 1500s, at the start of the first available continuous series of national mortality estimates, life expectancy in England was still in the mid‐30s and showed little sustained improvement until the nineteenth century. By the end of the 1800s, however, steady mortality decline had begun in all European countries for which reliable data series are available, and by the end of the twentieth century, life expectancy had reached the mid‐ to upper 70s in many industrialized countries. Although national‐level mortality data did not become available for the United States until 1933, existing evidence suggests that mortality decline in the US was similar to that in England. The highest life expectancy has been recorded in Japan, a developed country where health improvements in the early part of the twentieth century lagged behind those of European countries, but where mortality declines have been particularly impressive since the 1950s. Life expectancy at birth in Japan reached 84.6 years for women and 77.6 years for men by the year 2000. Moreover, the United Nations' estimates show an average life expectancy of 74.8 years in the more developed regions of the world, with 56 percent of industrialized countries having life expectancies of over 75 years in 1995–2000 (Table 1). The lowest life expectancies in industrialized countries are found in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, where health conditions stagnated during the late twentieth century, particularly for adult men.
Motherhood
Authors: Walzer Susan , Winslow Sarah
Published: September 2017

This entry reviews empirical and theoretical approaches to sociological study of motherhood. Intersections of motherhood with other social institutions such as work and family are particularly examined – as is scholarly work that recognizes the diversity of mothers and maternal experiences. The authors call for continued exploration of motherhood in the particular interactional, cultural, and structural contexts within which mothers enact their approaches to mothering.
Mythogenesis
Authors: Slotkin Richard
Published: September 2017

Myths are stories drawn from a society's history, which have acquired through persistent usage the power of symbolizing that society's ideology, and explicating the meaning and direction of its history. A society's mythology is, in effect, its memory system. Myths usually develop around cultural crises or moments of collective shock or trauma, when events challenge the belief system on which the society has hitherto operated. The most durable myths develop around issues or problems that are fundamental to the society's organization and persistent in its history: for example, the problem of kingship and succession in premodern societies, and the tensions between individual rights and social authority in modern nation‐states.
Multiphrenia
Authors: Gergen Kenneth J.
Published: September 2017

This concept originated in Kenneth Gergen's 1991 volume
The Saturated Self
(Gergen, 2001 [1991]). In that work Gergen proposed that the emerging technological developments of the past century increasingly expose the individual to multiple opinions, values, and ways of life. In doing so, they draw the individual into an increasing array of relationships, projects, and commitments. Further, in this socially saturated condition, the person is immersed in an extended world of “ought” – a world of criteria for social acceptability. As a result, the traditional ideal of a single, coherent self is gradually replaced by a sense of self as fragmented and decentered. The term “multiphrenia” is used, in particular, to refer to the individual's experience of conflict in values, ideals, opinions, and motives. Such conflict not only leaves one awash with material for reaching decisions, but generates a sense of pervasive inadequacy and a suspicion of the “best rational choice.” The concept was specifically not intended to designate a disease, but rather an increasingly common form of cultural life. Although Gergen's account exuded a certain nostalgia for a simpler and more coherent life, his analysis also gave way to a more inviting view of the future. Specifically, he proposed that, by undermining the tradition of a singular and unified self, the condition of multiphrenia lends itself to being understood as created within relationships. In effect, in the postmodern context, relationships may eclipse the self in their importance. Promise was located in the potential for global relations, a potential realized through the increasing interlinking of people from around the world. Such optimism has been questioned, however, as critics are concerned with the way in which the state of multiphrenia may support neoliberal and capitalist ideals of infinite expansion (Keupp, 2003). Others see the condition as a mental disorder, as it neglects what they consider the need for unity and purposiveness in one's life (Renner and Laux, 2000). Invited, then, is resistance against the multiphrenic state, despite the increased insinuation of communication technologies in our lives. Research does provide support for Gergen's account of changes in the individual's value commitments (Ovadia, 2003). Thus one responds to the challenge of constructive confrontation with a technology that promises to undermine longstanding and highly valued traditions.
Macrosociology
Authors: Boatcǎ Manuela
Published: September 2017

As a subfield of sociological analysis and theory, macrosociology deals with large‐scale, long‐term social processes, phenomena, and structures, such as social change, stratification, or the capitalist world‐economy. Conceptually, macrosociology is a relational term, meant to distinguish the broad level of sociological analysis from that characterizing microsociology, which studies small‐scale units and individual relationships, like social roles, interaction, or deviance. The tension between the objects of study of macrosociology as opposed to microsociology has routinely been construed as a choice between the analysis of either structure or agency, respectively (Sanderson 1991). While the alternating prominence of one approach over the other in the history of sociology as a discipline has been described as a “pendulum pattern” (Alexander 1988) not meant to settle the debate for either side, several attempts at bridging the divide by means of a theoretical synthesis have been undertaken since the 1980s (Giddens 1984; Ritzer 1981; Turner 1988). Together with the consolidation of mesosociology as an intermediate branch concerned with social networks, institutions, and organizations, this contributed to a slight depolarization of the “macro vs. micro” discussion.
Metapower
Authors: McGinty Patrick J.W. , Burns Tom R. , Hall Peter M.
Published: September 2017

The concept of power is central to the sociological pursuit but is also of concern across the social sciences in general. While commonly conceptualized in terms of control or the capacity of agents to act, to overcome resistance, or to mobilize resources, a larger concern must be how expressions of power provide the structured mechanisms through which agentic expressions of power are enacted. This larger and expanded sense of the concept of power is the foundational concern of the concept of metapower. With nearly 40 years of conceptual development behind it, contemporary research is now highlighting emergent understandings of metapower as setting the conditions for expressions of power in human social life.
Mediology
Authors: Vandenberghe Frédéric , Magnelli André
Published: September 2017

The neologism
médiologie
was coined in 1979 by Régis Debray, a French essayist, novelist, political agitator and former Latin American Guevarist
guerrillero
. The invention of the label predated the foundation of the new interdiscipline in 1991, the launch of a new journal
Cahiers de médiologie
(1996–2004, succeeded by
Médium)
and the gathering of some of France's most interesting philosophers and sociologists of technology, notably Bernard Stiegler, François Dagognet, Pierre Lévy, and Bruno Latour, around his project.
Milk, Harvey (1930–1978)
Authors: Royce Tracy , Hidalgo Danielle Antoinette
Published: September 2017

Harvey Milk's brief but influential life (1930– 1978) continues to inspire sociologists and others working in numerous areas, including those who engage with social movements, social change, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) studies. Although Milk's political career was cut tragically short, he accomplished much during the final 11 months of his life while serving as the first openly gay Supervisor for San Francisco's District 5.
Nation‐State
Authors: Connor Walker
Published: September 2017

The term nation‐state was originally intended to describe a political unit (a state) whose borders coincided or roughly coincided with the territorial distribution of a nation, the latter in its pristine sense of a human grouping who share a conviction of being ancestrally related. The word nation derives from the Latin verb
nasci
(meaning to be born) and its noun form,
natio
(connoting breed or race). The very coining of the hyphenate, nation‐state, illustrated an appreciation of the essential difference between its two components, but careless terminology has subsequently tended to obscure the difference. Today, nation is often used as a substitute for a state (as in “the United Nations”) or as a synonym for the population of a state without regard to its ethnonational composition (e.g., “the British nation”). With the distinction between nation and state thus blurred, the term nation‐state has lost much of its original value as a means of distinguishing among types of states. Although only some 10 percent of all states are sufficiently ethnically homogeneous to merit being described as nation‐states, it has become an increasingly common practice to refer to all states as nation‐states.
Nationalism
Authors: Leoussi Athena S.
Published: September 2017

Nationalism is a complex social phenomenon with the nation as its object. Rooted in the Latin
natio
, denoting community of birth, the term
nationalismus
seems to have been coined by Johann Gottfried Herder as a part of his Romantic celebration of cultural diversity. Nevertheless, modern nationalism has its ideological roots in both the Enlightenment and the Romantic reaction to it. Definitions of “nationalism” as, indeed, of the “nation” vary in the social sciences: first, according to the particular aspect of “nationalism” that they emphasize as essential to its nature. From this perspective, definitions can be divided mainly between political and cultural variables. Some scholars, like Hans Kohn, Carlton J. H. Hayes, John Plamenatz, Hugh Seton‐Watson, and A. D. Smith, have favored either typological or more inclusive definitions. Second, definitions vary according to the dating of nationalism, either before or during the French Revolution. This dating divides them into premodernist and modernist theories. Variations can also be found in explanations of nationalism, i.e., in the motivations and circumstances behind the rise of nationalist demands. Apart from the lack of consensus regarding the nature of nationalism, there is the further difficulty of distinguishing between the ideological and the analytical approaches to the phenomenon.
Neoliberalism
Authors: Gamble Andrew
Published: September 2017

Neoliberalism first arose in the 1940s but came to prominence in the 1970s. It has a number of important strands, Austrian and monetarist, laissez‐faire and social market. The ordoliberalism of the 1940s sought to give priority to market rather than bureaucratic means of ordering the economy within a framework of law. Economic liberals after 1945 set up the Mont Pelerin society to campaign for the rule of law, a minimal state, and individual liberty. For a time these ideas had little practical impact, but that changed in the 1970s following the crises which overwhelmed the postwar liberal order of national Keynesianism. Key neoliberal ideas on inflation, public spending, and trade unions, became the dominant common sense. Neoliberals favor reducing the role of government in the economy as much as possible, giving primacy to markets and the free play of competition. They advocate deregulation, privatization, marketization, and lower taxes. The state retains a major role because a free economy requires a strong state to establish and maintain the institutional arrangements for it. Neoliberals are often hostile to democracy, because of the primacy they give to safeguarding the market order. Challenged by the 2008 financial crisis, neoliberalism has so far proved resilient.
Network Society
Authors: Allan Stuart
Published: September 2017

Social theorist Manuel Castells coined the phrase the “network society” as a form of analytical shorthand to characterize the global forces transforming collective action and institutions from one national context to the next. The network society is the social structure of the Information Age, being organized around relationships of production/consumption, power, and experience. Its prevailing logic, while constantly challenged by conflicts, nevertheless gives shape to the pervasive infrastructure of cultural life in most societies – albeit with unpredictable outcomes.
Network Society
Authors: Allan Stuart
Published: September 2017

The concept of network society, as developed by Manuel Castells, is utilized in sociological research to investigate the global forces transforming collective action and institutions. In contrast with the notion of the “information society,” the network society is theorized as the social structure of the information age, being organized around relationships of production/consumption, power, and experience. Its prevailing logic, while constantly challenged by conflicts, gives shape to the pervasive infrastructure of cultural life in most societies – albeit with unpredictable outcomes. Castells's network‐centered approach has helped to secure fresh perspectives on the Arab uprisings of recent years, as well as interventions in the west, such as Occupy Wall Street.
New Left Realism
Authors: DeKeseredy Walter S.
Published: September 2017

Left realism is one key variant of critical criminology, which is a subfield of the broader discipline of criminology. This entry briefly reviews the history of and major contributions made by new left realism. Special attention is devoted to the major theoretical, empirical, and policy work done by left realists based in the United Kingdom and in North America.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900)
Authors: Antonio Robert J.
Published: September 2017

When Nietzsche was only 25 years old he was granted a doctoral degree from the University of Leipzig without completing a dissertation, and was appointed to a position in classical philology at the University of Basel. From the start, his philosophical writing was brilliant, unorthodox, and controversial. He dispensed with the formalities of academic writing and systemic philosophizing. Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy and Richard Wagner's music exerted influence on young Nietzsche's thinking. Brief service as a medic in the Franco‐Prussian war and the experience of wartime devastation led him to criticize the modern state and view patriotic fervor as the bane of all genuine culture. After 10 years of teaching, poor health forced him to leave his academic position. He wrote his major philosophical works in relative obscurity, but his fame grew meteorically shortly after madness ended his writing in 1889. He had enormous literary and cultural impact and influenced many of the twentieth century's most important philosophers and social theorists.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900)
Authors: J.Antonio Robert
Published: September 2017

At only 24 years old, Nietzsche was appointed to a position in classical philology at the University of Basel and granted a doctoral degree from the University of Leipzig without completing a dissertation. Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy and Richard Wagner's music inspired young Nietzsche's thinking. Dispensing with the formalities of academic writing and systematic philosophizing, his books were brilliant, unorthodox, and controversial. Brief volunteer military service as a medical orderly in the Franco‐Prussian War and experience of wartime devastation may have been the root of his withering criticism of the state and patriotic fervor as the bane of all genuine culture. Poor health forced him to leave his academic position after ten years. Giving up his German citizenship and leading a nomadic, stateless European life, Nietzsche wrote major works in relative isolation and obscurity, but his fame grew meteorically shortly after madness ended his writing in early 1889. Nietzsche traced the roots of modernity back to Socrates and early Judeo‐Christian culture, and treated the spread of Christianity and western modernization as sociocultural decline. He saw emergent mass culture and mass politics of his day as manifesting exhausted Christian morality and cultivating mediocre, conformist fodder for demagogues. He urged creation of a postmodern civilization.
Norm of Reciprocity
Authors: Chriss James J.
Published: September 2017

According to Lester Ward (1883, 1: 464–8), human society has passed through three stages of development, with a fourth stage not yet realized. In the first stage (the autarchic), human beings were savage and solitary creatures. With their higher mental powers in comparison to the lower animals, human beings gained mastery over most other creatures, yet what they required most was protection from their own kind.
Nation and gender
Authors: Halkias Alexandra
Published: September 2017

The nexus of nation and gender is pivotal to the understanding of the formation of identities and social conflict alike. Though not specified by one term, or as a single concept in itself, a significant relationship between nation and gender is increasingly acknowledged within sociology. Numerous studies exploring this intersection from empirical and theoretical perspectives have been published during the last two decades. Just what form this relationship takes is contingent on the larger social context. Many thinkers posit one or the other as superior. It seems increasingly clear, however, that rather than standing in a hierarchical relationship, the two are intertwined, shaping each other in unique ways.
Operations Management
Authors: Edwards John
Published: September 2017

Operations management is a discipline that is seen by some as caught between the pragmatic and the theoretical. In common with its cognate disciplines such as operational/operations research and information systems – and indeed systems thinking more generally – there is often an uneasy tension between the need to be able to carry out research that leads to generalizable findings and the desire for actions that make an impact in specific cases.
Organizational Careers
Authors: Paradeise Catherine
Published: September 2017

Everett Hughes (1958), the leader of the so‐called Second School of Chicago, noticed that life in any society is ordered partly according to individual choices, and this order is partly institutionalized. Over time, individual choices in partly institutionalized environments build social careers. In that sense everyone experiments with a social career, even though this remains to a certain extent unconscious and unseen. A career has a subjective facet, moving with the career itself. It is the way in which someone sees her life as a whole and interprets the meaning of the various attributes, actions, and occurrences that happen through life. It also has an objective facet, consisting of a series of social statuses. In modern societies, social order largely derives from interaction between persons and their work. An individual career has been first objectively described as a sequence of jobs, orderly or otherwise, that originates from early socialization and education and has consequences for status. Socialization generates capabilities, social capital, and aspirations that qualify one for a work career. In industrial societies, prestige, power, and wealth in society at large are in turn strongly shaped by work careers.
Organizations, Tradition and
Authors: Feldman Steven P.
Published: September 2017

The essence of tradition is sequential pattern, a sequence of related meanings that are received and transmitted over time. The meanings can be related by association to common themes, in the contiguity of presentation and transmission, or in descent from a common origin (Shils 1981). For example, pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson has maintained a company “credo” since the 1930s. The credo has been changed multiple times during this period, but similar themes, the style of education and communication, and the connection to its origin have remained. Thus, Johnson & Johnson has a business philosophy tradition. This tradition can be seen in the way managers thought about and reacted to the Tylenol crisis in the early 1980s.
Parental Involvement in Education
Authors: Catsambis Sophia
Published: September 2017

Parental involvement in children's education consists of many home‐based and school‐based family activities. It begins before children enter school and changes in nature as students progress. In the elementary grades it reaches its peak and is more supervisory. In the middle grades and high school, students seek more autonomy and parents adjust their activities to address adolescents' developmental needs and aspirations as young adults. Through all stages of schooling, parental involvement is associated with students' academic success and positive school‐related behaviors. Some family practices are more effective than others and some are important for only certain school outcomes or at specific children's ages. In the elementary grades, reading activities at home are most important, while in high school parental guidance and support of student's decisions regarding coursework and college are important. The specific practices and effectiveness of involvement vary cross‐culturally and are affected by many factors, especially social class and parental education. Parental involvement also functions differently or serves different purposes for different ethnic/cultural groups. To be effective, parents need to draw support and resources from the wider social environment and especially from schools.
Patriarchy
Authors: Levy Donald P.
Published: September 2017

Patriarchy is most commonly understood as a form of social organization in which cultural and institutional beliefs and patterns accept, support, and reproduce the domination of women and younger men by older or more powerful men. Literally the “rule of the fathers,” today sociologists view as patriarchal any system that contributes to the social, cultural, and economic superiority or hegemony of men. Consequently, sociologists study the manner in which societies have become and continue to be patriarchal by investigating both social institutions and commonly held cultural beliefs. At the same time, scholars investigate the consequences of patriarchy, i.e., differential access to scarce societal resources including power, authority, and opportunity by gender.
Peace‐Making
Authors: Gillespie Wayne
Published: September 2017

The goal of peace‐making is to reduce human suffering and thereby eliminate, or at least dramatically reduce, social problems such as crime and delinquency. It calls for an analysis of the sources of suffering, which may include analysis at multiple points, including the micro‐, meso‐, and macrolevels. Peace‐making focuses on mindfulness at the individual level, connectedness of individuals to each other and social institutions, and, at a cultural level, an ethic of care.
Performance Measurement
Authors: Townley Barbara , Doyle Rosemary
Published: September 2017

Performance measurement encompasses the role of performance indicators, measures, and targets within a performance management system and is designed to improve organizational functioning. Indicators, or key performance indicators, identify key areas of strategic and operational performance in organizations. Measures seek to give a numerical evaluation of their achievement, while targets are designed as aspirational statements of intended future performance. The purpose of performance measurement is to improve organizational performance by focusing on the key functions or activities that are designed to achieve organizational objectives, and motivate and influence behavior through the setting of targets. Performance measurement is central to strategic management approaches, which utilize core mission statements, strategic objectives, and a focus on outputs to drive organizational performance.
Phenomenology
Authors: Schutte Gerhard
Published: September 2017

Originally of philosophical origin, phenomenology reasoned that the pure meaning of phenomena were only to be subjectively apprehended and intuitively grasped in their essence. It achieved relevance to the social sciences within the tension between logical positivism and interpretivism or (in nineteenth‐century terms) the natural and cultural sciences. At the turn of the twentieth century the neo‐Kantians’ insistence on a distinctive epistemology and methodology for the “cultural” sciences found a well‐considered resonance in German sociological thought (e.g., Weber's). The growth, explanatory force, and extension of natural science's objective perspective and positivistic methodology to the domains of the cultural sciences did not go unchallenged. It was the mathematician‐turned‐philosopher Edmund Husserl who laid the foundation of the twentieth‐century phenomenological movement by taking to task the positivistic approach to psychology.
Place
Authors: Wasson Leslie
Published: September 2017

The concept of place is used three ways in sociology. First, there is the microsociological concept of place as a material location; a fixed, bounded site which can be identified with a particular set of situated expectations and behaviors. A second use of the term refers to the identification or attachment an individual develops to a particular location, usually geographical, which has an influence on his or her ongoing self‐identity. A third use of the term refers to the niche in the social stratification system in which the individual belongs.
Plural Society
Authors: Rex John
Published: September 2017

Many of the societies which have problems of multicultural governance are former multi‐ethnic colonies. A theory of such colonial and postcolonial societies draws particularly on the work of J. S. Furnivall and M. G. Smith. According to Furnivall, different ethnic groups in a plural society meet only in the marketplace. This marketplace, however, lacks the characteristics which Durkheim envisaged in his concept of organic solidarity. It lacks the shared values which organic solidarity requires and involves brutal conflict and exploitation. The sense of solidarity on which morality depends is to be found within the different ethnic groups when they go home from the marketplace. Within these groups there is intense solidarity and moral unity. Furnivall worked in Burma but wrote about Java, drawing on the research of Dutch economic theorist Boeke. Boeke wrote that in the economy of Netherlands India “there is a materialism, rationalism and individualism and a concentration on economic ends far more complete and absolute than in homogeneous Western lands” (quoted in Furnivall 1939: 452). As he sees it, this is a capitalism quite different from that which grew slowly over hundreds of years and maintained its moral roots.
Political Process Theory
Authors: Caren Neal
Published: September 2017

The standard explanation for social movement mobilization, known as political process theory (PPT), emphasizes the role of political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and framing processes, along with protest cycles and contentious repertoires. Developed in the US in the 1970s and 1980s and rooted in an analysis of civil rights struggles, PPT focuses on the interaction between movement attributes, such as organizational structure, and the broader economic and political context. Critics argue that the theory is overly structural and invariant. Recent research by core PPT theorists has shifted focus to a more dynamic analysis of the reoccurring mechanisms and processes of contentious politics.
Political sociology
Authors: Calder Ryan , Lie John
Published: September 2017

Political sociology analyzes the operation of power in social life, examining the distribution and machinations of power at all levels: individual, organizational, communal, national, and international. Defined thus, political science becomes a subfield of sociology. Talcott Parsons (1951), for example, treats the political as one of the four principal domains of sociological analysis. In practice, however, political sociology has developed as a sociological subfield, with its distinct concerns and fashions.
Politics and Media
Authors: McNair Brian
Published: September 2017

In 1922 the American journalist and social commentator Walter Lippmann wrote that “the significant revolution of modern times is the revolution taking place in the art of creating consent among the governed” (Lippmann 1954). From his vantage point in the early twentieth century, just four years after the end of World War I, Lippmann was drawing attention to the fact that politicians were entering a new era in which the role of the media was going to be central to effective government. Henceforth, they would have to know and understand how the media impacted on public opinion. Such knowledge, he predicted, would “alter every political premise.”
Pollution Zones, Linear and Planar
Authors: Hasegawa Koichi
Published: September 2017

The concepts of linear and planar pollution zones refer to the geographical figuration of the polluted area caused especially by high‐speed transportation pollution. Whereas bullet trains and high‐speed expressways create linear pollution zones 20–50 meters wide on each side along their routes, airplanes produce planar pollution zones along their takeoff and landing routes surrounding the airport. In the former case, the number of victims at any given site suffering severe noise pollution may be relatively limited, typically at most several thousands of residents. In the latter case, though, victims may number more than 10,000 residents over several cities and towns.
Popular Culture
Authors: Miller Toby
Published: September 2017

The word “popular” denotes “of the people,” “by the people,” and “for the people.” In other words, it is made up of them as
subjects
, whom it textualizes via drama, sport, and information;
workers
, who undertake that textualization through performances and recording; and
audiences
, who receive the ensuing texts.
Postmodern Organizations
Authors: Linstead Stephen
Published: September 2017

Postmodern organizations are considered to have broken with the traditional principles of organizing that were typical of modernity and its associated rationalism and logics of efficiency. They display new and original forms and practices both in response to and in shaping change in global society, and are associated with networking as a process rather than with hierarchy as a structure. They can be identified by the extent to which they depart from modern forms of knowing and knowledge construction, but also by their adoption and creation of new and different forms and patterns of operation and regulation. They embody a shift from material to immaterial resources (such as information) as the focus of their labor, with an emphasis on the image communicated to the consumer, client, or service recipient as much as on the substantial features of the product or service. They may be considered relational as much as essential, extending the principles of deregulation and de‐differentiation beyond Fordism and even Toyotism. Modern methods of organizing do, however, still persist and in practice even archetypal postmodern organizations may hybridize modern and postmodern modes of organizing, coexisting in heterogeneous industrial populations including organizations run on predominantly modern lines.
Prisons
Authors: Sumter Melvina
Published: September 2017

Prisons are secure institutions which house juvenile and adult felons with sentences that range from one year to life who are remanded to the custody of a state or federal correctional agency for incarceration. These facilities have the task of carrying out the sentence imposed by the courts as well as protecting the public by preventing escapes through maintaining custody and safe and secure institutions. As well, these facilities are charged with the responsibility of providing all of the programs and services necessary to care for the inmate population remanded to their custody.
Professional Dominance in Medicine
Authors: Light Donald W.
Published: September 2017

Professional dominance is a theory about the ways in which professionalization can parlay expertise and legal powers to develop hegemonic control over a domain of human life and culture. It thus raises issues of trust, exploitation, suppression of competing groups, subordination of allied professions, and escalation of costs. It is largely used in literature on the medical profession in modern times. This entry also explains how other stakeholders become provoked as countervailing powers to challenge, if not end, professional dominance.
Professions, Organized
Authors: Carter Chris
Published: September 2017

Professions are one of the main forms of institutionalizing expertise in western societies (Giddens 1991). The term “profession” is a curious one. It immediately conjures up images drawn from television shows featuring lawyers or medical doctors. Such representations point to the hold that certain professions have on our imagination. In
Bleak House
, Charles Dickens's celebrated novel, Richard Carstone considers which profession he wants to take up. The realm of possibilities – according to the definitional criteria of the age – is the military, the clergy, the law, and medicine. Professions such as law and medicine have successfully maintained both their power and status across several centuries and are seen as quintessential exemplars of what constitutes a profession. In the late nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth, a raft of new professions emerged. Some, like accountancy, have accrued considerable power.
Property Crime
Authors: Copes Heith , Null Crystal
Published: September 2017

Property crimes are defined as those offenses where offenders take money or property from victims without the use or threat of force. They include a long list of offenses such as burglary, larceny‐theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, shoplifting, fraud, embezzlement, and forgery. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines the first four of these offenses as Part I property crimes. These crimes make up the property crime index published yearly in the Uniform Crime Report (UCR). The majority of data collected by the FBI on property crime is concentrated around Part I offenses. The remaining offenses are classified as Part II property crimes in the UCR (FBI 2003).
Psychological Social Psychology
Authors: Powell Joel
Published: September 2017

Psychological social psychology is concerned with social influences on individual behavior. In its century of modern history, psychological social psychology has addressed issues of attitude, perception, memory, prejudice, personality, emotion, conformity, learning, socialization, persuasion, and cognition. In topics, methods, and theory there has been minimal overlap with sociological social psychology primarily because of psychology's persistent emphasis on the individual as the most important unit of analysis.
Public Housing
Authors: Pardee J. W. , Wright J.
Published: September 2017

Public housing policy in the United States emerged in the 1930s out of economic necessity rather than to redress a collective housing need. In response to ideological, economic, sociopolitical, and demographic forces that emerged during the Great Depression and continue into the present, public housing now functions as a system of economic reinvestment, contemporary gentrification, increasingly formalized privatization, and on occasion, affordable housing. Some of these forces and their associated controversies include: ideological differences regarding who should provide housing for needy citizens – whether it should be government or the private business sector; discriminatory practices such as redlining and blockbusting among real estate, mortgage, and banking interests whose actions created concentrations of poor, segregated, African‐American ghettos; demographic changes and inequities supported by the suburbanization of America; the unintentional effects of housing policies intended to help the poor but which functioned as disincentives for transitioning out of social assistance programs, including welfare and public housing itself; and an increasingly conservative fiscal and political climate, which has contributed to systematic, chronic defunding of public housing initiatives, depletion of the public housing stock, and deterioration of existing units.