Search

This paper has in part emerged from work recently undertaken by Parker and Pant under a British Academy funded Small Grant examining the phenomenon of aging in Nepal. This has enabled them to work in collaboration with the Nepal School of Social Work in Kathmandu to both generate locally relevant empirical research on aging and to facilitate the creation of spaces for dialogue on the implications of aging in Nepal. As a result of this project a network of key academics, activists, government policy makers and non-government organizations, both national and international, has been formed. The findings of this study reveal a lack of both empirical data and theoretical development on aging in Nepal. Aging in the west is often viewed from a biomedical perspective where the emphasis is on medical treatment and health and social care arrangements. Biomedicine also dominates international health strategies, organizations, and the funding streams for aid, of which Nepal is a recipient. Whilst longevity is clearly a positive outcome of development, it also presents health and social care dilemmas. This paper provides an opportunity to explore some of these key issues and highlights the need for practitioners, policy makers and the research community in Nepal to provide an open dialogue in which local, culturally appropriate decisions can be developed in the best interest of older people in Nepal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we address two bodies of sociological research: the effects of globalization and theories of pay. Most sociological writings on globalization emphasize its negative consequences. Most sociological writings on pay allow no role for productivity but, rather, assert the importance of power in the production of labour market outcomes. In this paper we examine the effects of three forms of globalization — exporting, foreign ownership, and outsourcing — and include in our analysis institutional features of organizations typically associated with worker power. Using the rich data available in the Workplace and Employee Survey we find: i) pay tends to be higher in workplaces that export and are foreign owned; ii) employees in more productive workplaces are paid more; iii) pay is higher where internal labour markets are present; and iv) treating productivity and power as alternative explanations for pay differentials is a mistake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization affords an excellent opportunity to develop a genuinely universal, scientific sociology. In recent decades, the politicization of the discipline has undermined the central mission of sociology: scientific discovery and explanation. The paper identifies several intellectual shifts that will facilitate expansion and communication in an emerging global village of sociological analysts: 1) breaking with classical sociology to build upon innovative theoretical ideas; 2) eliminating the ideological and normative focus that plagues much contemporary sociology; 3) moving beyond teleological approaches to scientific explanation; 4) embracing a distinctively "social" conceptualization of sociology's subject matter; and 5) eliminating nationalistic disciplinary boundaries and the attendant parochialism that obscures the search for universal principles of social behaviour. The final section of the paper emphasizes the internationalization of sociology, reorganized along epistemological lines. Those scholars whose research focuses on observable variations in social behaviour occupy an intellectual location quite distinct from those who place their politics at the centre of their social analyses, focus on the meanings that individuals attach to their experiences, or reject science altogether as a valid form of knowledge building. Rather than continue fruitless dialogues with those who have different objectives with their work, sociological analysts are invited to join a global village of scientists who examine the full range of cases that reflect purely social behaviour, drawing upon the dimensions of social space or networks of resource flows that are most relevant to their general explanations. Conceptualized this way, sociology becomes a global science no longer handicapped by individualistic theories or nationalistic political fervour. The net result is the development of a genuine "sociology without borders" aimed at realizing the discipline's fullest scientific potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent spate of foreign takeovers once again raises the question of whether Canada's corporate elite is being "hollowed out" in a silent surrender to foreign-based transnational firms. Using data from a study of interlocking directorates among the largest corporations in Canada and the world for the years 1996 and 2006, this paper assesses whether recent changes in the Canadian corporate network indicate a process of hollowing out or the reproduction of a domestic elite within global circuits of capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenges for sociology posed by global environmental crises are two-fold. First, the growing prevalence of environmental dilemmas in global society demand that a globalizing sociology also be an environmental sociology. This requires the discipline to refine its ability to integrate environmental influences into its conceptual frameworks on social change. Second, the effectiveness of society's strategic responses to environmental crises depends on the degree to which understanding the generation of environmental problems and responding to them are sociologically informed. Consequently, sociologists can make important contributions to environmental improvement, through sociological research on environmental discourses within civil society. However, this can only be done if the first challenge is addressed. In this paper, we highlight coupled socioecological systems functioning in an embedded hierarchy of local, regional, and global scales. Strategic environmental response depends particularly on governance structures and the production and accessibility of knowledge and we focus our discussion on these two domains. Global environmental changes have introduced multiple sources of challenge for nation-states and for the ways in which democratic participation in governance becomes operative. The dramatic shifts in governance fomented by environmental concern in and of themselves require sociological attention; sociologists also have a role in evaluating the efficacy of these organizational networks for addressing environmental crises. Second, we turn our attention to the means by which these environmental changes have challenged the production of knowledge about the environment. For example, the limits of traditional methods of scientific inquiry accompany an erosion in society's confidence in science as a harbinger of progress, all the while simultaneously pushing science — however reluctantly for scientists themselves — into a position of political prominence. We close with suggestions for future sociological attention to governance and knowledge, and the ways this projects sociology more effectively into the global milieu in which environmental change will be increasingly salient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social origins of sociology are rooted in urban modernity, and specifically in civil society. Such a point of origins occasioned the growth of totalistic systems of social representation, which culminated in the modem state. The two contexts sealed sociology's role as a sort of bridge between civil society and the state or, more generally, between traditions of prosaic social communities and those of applied, action-oriented systematicity. The paper argues that modem processes of globalization have reshuffled the cards, as civil society has become more globalized and less beholden to state jurisdiction, and as the state has increasingly become less competent as an agent of strategic action in a world typified by globalization. This particular impasse has become detrimental to sociology, since it caused the relocation of its addressees away from the communicative bridges that have linked them since the inception of modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]