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This article examines the possibilities engendered by land-based analyses within the sociology of sport. We examine how "Canada's" Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action on sport reproduce a logic of social inclusion, one which assimilates Indigenous athletes and Peoples into settler models of sport. To consider epistemological tools for unsettling settler sport systems, we turn to critical Indigenous scholarship on land-based analyses and pedagogies. To illustrate the possibilities of land-based analyses, we examine lacrosse, an Indigenous sporting practice with roots embedded in relational interconnectedness with the land. A land-based approach to sport offers opportunities for revising the assumptions, values, and ethics underpinning settler models of sport through, for example, emphasizing the importance of community, healing, and land stewardship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this special issue, which calls for a "more radical sociology of sport and physical culture," the purpose of this paper is to address how practices of reflexivity might be mobilized among critical sport scholars toward changing the intersectional, fragmented, and complex communities we inhabit inside and outside the academy. We begin by conducting a literature review of researcher reflexivity and positionality in Sociology of Sport Journal from 2000 to 2022. Utilizing Wanda Pillow's "reflexivities of discomfort," we interrogate our own research by engaging in a reflexive dialogue as "critical friends." Through this work, we try to make sense of the potential of these dialogues for shaping our ethical, political, and personal approaches to research, writing, methodology, and knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sociology of Sport Journal (SSJ) is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a special issue that focuses on liberation, futurity, intersectionality, and interdisciplinarity. The guest editors discuss the significance of these themes in studying sport, physical culture, and the physically active body. They emphasize the importance of critical scholarship that highlights the experiences of marginalized groups and challenges systems of oppression. The editors hope that SSJ and the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) can provide spaces for emerging scholars and contribute to the future of the field. [Extracted from the article]

This article analyses the narratives of young people in the Gambia and of Afghan migrants in Turkey on the themes of migration and Europe as a place of destination. Based on extensive focus group and interview data, we show that these narratives (1) have a high degree of similarities across different contexts and (2) appear incongruent with, and largely unaffected by, the EU's messages of deterrence in information campaigns. We explain this misalignment by referring to a classic sociological distinction between impressions 'given' and those 'given off'. When the EU seeks to give an 'impression' in third countries (such as to be an unattractive place for irregular migrants), their messages compete with positive images of Europe provided through a myriad of other channels and information sources. To a large extent, perceptions of Europe among migrant communities are defined by positive impressions 'given off' through Europe's history as a destination area and social media accounts of individual 'success stories' of diaspora members. The social and material rewards associated with migration further inform migrants' narratives, as do the circumstances of both groups, which often push them towards leaving regardless of the risks this step involves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which individuals belong to a racial group, and what determines membership? I argue that questions about membership are importantly different from questions regarding the ontology of racial categories and invite a distinctive line of inquiry. But there's a formidable challenge to providing determinate and consistent answers to membership questions: Many phenomena documented in sociology and psychology generate reasonable and systematic disagreement about membership that cannot be adjudicated by an influential variety of social constructionism. While the puzzle of racial identity remains, we emerge with a new appreciation for how racial membership is a distinctive part of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While true interdisciplinarity is needed to understand morality and its development, a realistic step in that direction for the current special issue is to enhance and promote a neglected disciplinary contribution to the field, namely sociology. This special issue brings together six articles applying sociological analysis to moral development and education together with one article overviewing sociological contributions to morality in general. The work is intended to invigorate sociological treatments of moral development and education as a step toward a genuinely interdisciplinary domain of research on morality and its education. The contributions to this special issue bring alive the moral background by combining contextual and individual levels of analysis in the exploration of difficult topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artists‐entrepreneurs struggle with the tension between their artistic and entrepreneurial values. Previous research on this tension focuses on urban creative hubs and shows the presence of politicians to create, with the artists, a structure constituted of investment formulas to ease this tension. Based on Boltanski and Thévenot's On Justification theory, our research focuses on the case of artist‐entrepreneurs located outside Canada's creative hubs. The tension between artistic and entrepreneurial values is expressed as a tension between the inspired and market worlds, which is managed through the civic world in Canadian creative hubs. The results of 50 semi‐structured interviews with non‐urban Canadian artist‐entrepreneurs reveal that politicians are less implicated in these regional cultural industries. In order to manage the tension between artistic and entrepreneurial values, artists themselves are developing individual and collective investment formulas to create structure in the cultural industries that compensates for the low‐level of involvement by politicians. Thus, we identify that the tension between the inspired and market worlds is managed through the presence of the projective world in the case of Canada's non‐urban artist‐entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What further evidence is needed to effectively address the unsatisfactory schooling experiences and educational trajectory of Black youth to help shape their path toward more successful social outcomes? I return to this persistent question in my research to reflect on how I have used sociological research in prior observations, and to build on earlier studies. I show how following research participants over a period of time, and with attention to how they relate to and are nested in community, family and peers, has enabled me to more effectively document their experiences, imaginations, and ambitions from adolescence to adulthood. I contend that longitudinal studies, framed by a community referenced approach, best ensure that we attend to the complex, diverse, and transitional lives of Black youth, and the social, cultural, educational, economic, and political contexts they navigate. At this time of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) initiatives, sociology could help to advance education about, and initiate action for, Black people so that the equity promised by Canadian multiculturalism might be realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on Michel Serres's unconventional approach to society, which diverges from traditional social sciences terminology and boundaries. Topics include Serres's critique of social contract theory, his concept of unbounded sociality, and his exploration of how global phenomena challenge traditional social frameworks.

Sociologists define "wicked problems" as issues confronting humanity that have no clear right answer or perspective. The issue of climate change is a wicked problem of our age--and an issue that few regulators have explicitly addressed within their remit. The polluting effects of health care work itself have recently been highlighted as a call to action within health professions to address climate change issues more forcefully. Perspectives on how and why regulators should--or should not--prioritize climate change in their activities can be difficult to articulate. An approach to this issue that focuses on appropriate and proportionate use of regulatory levers is essential. Processes to allow for greater transparency in discussions, decision making, and strategic plan development are important for regulators to consider. While regulatory bodies vary in their statutory ability or organizational capacity to lead or address climate change directly within their profession, opportunities may exist to partner with other groups to develop evidence-informed options for practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the literature on person-culture fit, we investigated how culture (assessed as national-level familism), personality (tapped by attachment styles) and their interactions predicted social network characteristics in 21 nations/areas (N = 2977). Multilevel mixed modeling showed that familism predicted smaller network size but greater density, tie strength, and multiplexity. Attachment avoidance predicted smaller network size, and lower density, tie strength, and multiplexity. Attachment anxiety was related to lower density and tie strength. Familism enhanced avoidance's association with network size and reduced its association with density, tie strength, and multiplexity. Familism also enhanced anxiety's association with network size, tie strength, and multiplexity. These findings contribute to theory building on attachment and culture, highlight the significance of culture by personality interaction for the understanding of social networks, and call attention to the importance of sampling multiple countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates alcohol consumption within cultures of football fandom through the innovative combination of theories of the carnivalesque and Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, field, and capital. Focus groups (n = 79) were conducted with football supporters in England and Scotland. Semi-structured interviews (n = 15) were also conducted with key organizational stakeholders. Research explored the importance and role of alcohol consumption for supporters when watching or attending matches.. Participants confirmed the cultural significance, perceived normalcy and historical links between football and alcohol consumption. Supporters highlighted the importance of the sociability, friendship, and social capital aspects of alcohol consumption. Participants believed football supporters are perceived differently in comparison with supporters of other sports, arguing that legislation surrounding alcohol consumption at other sports allowed supporters to enhance the carnivalesque by drinking alcohol, whereas football fans were more restricted. Participants agreed the habitus of excessive drinking and violence associated with football supporters led to a bad reputation, however, this view was outdated. Participants also recognized a growing drug culture in football. The findings draw attention to the alcohol-sport relationship and the contested relations, and diverging interests and influences, within the social field of football. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we develop a new avenue for understanding the informative value of researchers' emotions for qualitative research by deepening our understanding of awkwardness in the field. With this, we aim to develop Arlie Hochschild's notion of 'emotion work' further as a methodological tool. Awkwardness concerns discrepancies in researchers' emotions that require and reveal emotion work. The argument is that reflecting on emotion work performed by the researcher in awkward situations is a way to gain insight into what we call 'relational concepts': concepts designating phenomena that reside and/or emerge in relationships between at least two persons. We show what this looks like in practice by presenting cases of awkwardness from three qualitative research projects revolving around such relational concepts, namely, recognition, dependency and dignity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 9 October 2022, Bruno Latour died. His death was widely and deeply mourned. He is a great loss to sociology. This article takes Latour's death as cue to make an initial posthumous assessment of his work. It argues that, with Latour's death, sociology is at a cross-roads which in some ways reprises the Tarde-Durkheim debate. When Tarde died in 1904, the Durkheimian school became dominant. After Latour's death, this article considers whether that history might now been reversed with a subsidence of the Durkheimian tradition. The article argues it should not. While recognising Latour's ingenious creativity and his massive contribution to sociology, the article rejects Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Despite the many strengths of ANT and the extraordinary influence it has exerted, the article dissects the actant to claim that ANT is a flawed project. It argues in order to avoid accusations of determinism, the status of the actant was always ambiguous in ANT. As a result, although Latour consistently denied the power of human social groups, his analyses eventually relied upon surreptitious appeals to them. The neo-Durkheimian currents which are evident in contemporary sociology should re-assert themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how police officers generate momentum and create opportunities for gaining control in—what they perceive as—potentially violent interactions. Theoretically, the article aims to add to interactionist sociology by illuminating the mechanisms through which participants anticipate and create shared meanings of future possibilities for an encounter. I build upon insights into the function of social interaction for future configuration proposed by interactionist scholars since the 1960s. The empirical contribution is to challenge explanations of officers' attempts to gain control as mere cognitivist decision‐making, ignoring the embodied dimension of anticipating. Drawing on ninety‐four elicitation interviews with Dutch officers on violent events and field work observations of police‐civilian interactions, findings show that officers argue they sense opportunities through an awareness of civilian distraction. To create opportunities for actions that enable gaining control, they refocus civilians' attention. Officers do this by acting in ways a civilian does not readily anticipate through bodily spatial positioning and by using material objects, what I refer to as "positional play." By detailing how officers act upon momentum, I illustrate that embodied sense‐making and attunement toward serendipitous circumstances is key for police action. The article enriches interactionist scholarship by showing the mise en scène of how the police realize control on an embodied level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates shared reading between parents and young children, theorised as 'sensory affinities', understood through a sociological lens. I argue that reading cannot be confined to educational aspects, and towards increased prominence for relational dimensions. I explore the narratives of 29 parents/carers of reading with young children. Drawing on data on the embodied aspects of reading, Mason's concept of affinities illuminates the sensory facets of reading applied to family intimacies. Interventions have hitherto distilled literacy from the wider social context. However, an understanding of reading in the context of families from diverse backgrounds, yields insights into the sensory character of everyday family life. Findings are of significance to sociology broadly, and specifically, families and relationships. Centring families facilitates a fuller understanding of literacy practices. Finally, the focus on an everyday, tangible practice such as reading can support understandings of hidden and taken-for-granted dimensions of family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent religious declines in the United States are for a large part driven by the growing number of Americans who were raised religiously but left religion in the transition to adulthood. Nonetheless, their views and behaviors may still be influenced by their religious upbringing. We explore such legacy effects by examining how changing religiosity during the transition to adulthood influences volunteering among young adults. Analyzing panel data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, we estimate two types of effects: effects of cumulative religious trajectories in youth, and effects of religiosity in youth that are not mediated by religiosity in adulthood. We find that histories of religious involvement shape volunteering in adulthood, but the precise nature of such effects varies across dimensions of religiosity and types of volunteering. Religious service attendance in youth promotes volunteering in adulthood mostly indirectly, through influencing religiosity in adulthood, and exclusively for activities organized by religious groups. By contrast, religious identification in youth promotes volunteering in adulthood also through other channels, and its effects on secular volunteering may persist even when people are not religious in adulthood. We discuss the implications of these findings in light of ongoing declines in religiosity in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is a situation? For good reasons, (micro)sociological approaches focus on different aspects, elements, and perspectives. However, the polyphony can be confusing and prevent a fruitful dialog between theories and disciplines. Therefore, we aim to provide an integrative concept: drawing on phenomenological and interactionist understandings of “the situation,” we conclude that what is crucial are the emerging relations of forms of presence, leading to an understanding of situations as relational presences. To this end, we distinguish dimensions of presence, and forms of presence, and formulate a heuristic as a tool for precisely naming the constituent conditions of situations and their different levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This theoretical paper describes a classification with accompanying analysis of the main forms of social conduct at the end of life that goes beyond our usual understanding of sociological characterisations of dying. A taxonomy of end-of-life conduct is presented that illustrates and categorises past and contemporary sociological studies of end-of-life conduct and experiences. The categories include embodiment-led dying, systems-led dying, criticism-led dying, endangerment, and anti-dying. Discussion of this spectrum of behaviour is compared with current research and theory in the sociology of dying resulting in critical observations about limitations and omissions in the current work of this field. The paper ends with identification of theoretical limitations before discussing implications for future theory, research, and policy development for the sociology of dying and for end-of-life studies more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at exploring existing literature on substance use prevention programs, focusing on refugee youth. A comprehensive search for relevant articles was conducted on Scopus, PubMed, and EBSCOhost Megafile databases including Academic Search Ultimate, APA PsycArticles, APA PsycInfo, CINAHL with Full Text, E-Journals, Humanities Source Ultimate, Psychology and Behavioural Sciences Collection, and Sociology Source Ultimate. Initially, a total of 485 studies were retrieved; nine papers were retained for quality assessment after removing duplicates. Of the nine studies that met the inclusion criteria, only three are found to partially addressed substance use prevention programs. The two substance use prevention programs that emerge from the study are Adelante Social and Marketing Campaign (ASMC), and Screening and Brief Intervention (SBI). Six others explored protective factors and strategies for preventing substance use. The study findings show that refugee youth held negative attitudes toward institutions that provide substance use prevention programs. This review concluded that refugee youth often experience persistent substance use as they are not aware of prevention programs that may reduce the prevalence and/or severity of such misuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on why women, especially racialized women, stay in undesirable relationships is scarce and often misses how intersecting inequalities affect their decisions and the wider range of consent and coercion. Syrian refugee women in Egypt, grappling with not just unwanted marriages but also displacement and uprooting are a case in point. Their limited cultural, social, and legal mobility complicates their decision-making and limits their options. I describe this compounded precarity as ‘double immobility’: immobility within the marriage and immobility within the country. A secondary displacement where this time they become ‘displaced in place’ (Lubkemann, S. C. 2008. “Involuntary Immobility: On a Theoretical Invisibility in Forced Migration Studies.” Journal of Refugee Studies 21 (4): 454–475). Drawing on qualitative interviews with Syrian refugee women in Egypt in 2017, I employ an intersectional lens to highlight the social, legal, and migratory locations of displaced women that exacerbate their predicament, prompting a re-evaluation of the binary views of force/voluntary and coercion/consent in discussions about entering, remaining, and exiting marriage. The paper offers a novel framework for understanding the intersection of gendered displacement and marital dynamics and contributes to the broader discussion within the sociology of gender, displacement, and marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes the concept of ‘imperism’ as an analytical tool apt to describe political processes in Putin’s Russia and beyond. Imperism denotes an ontological orientation, or nomos (the term derives from theories of religion and politics by Berger and Schmitt), that undergirds a plurality of civic positions, informs policy, and fundamentally casts imperialness as a political entity’s normal, desirable state. Russia’s imperist nomos shall be explored in its key dimensions, including cosmology, authority, sociology, and aesthetics. However, imperism’s analytical purchase is not limited to the Russian case. In particular, this paper considers the merits of this category vis-à-vis an array of related but distinct concepts: imperialism, authoritarianism, fascism, nationalism, and irredentism. On those grounds, it will be argued that Putinist Russia’s military adventurism manifests a peculiar, imperist form of imperialism; that the Putin regime, albeit hard to categorise, appears to share an imperist nomos with historical fascisms; and that imperism’s ultimate scope exceeds that of nationalist irredentism. The paper ends with a reflection on the advantageous epistemological potentialities of imperism as a category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent debates in anthropology and sociology have focused on non-events, with the difference between everyday violence and abrupt life-changing events disappearing, though abundant studies on disaster memories demonstrate the significance of collective shattering events even in lives characterized by immense ordinary suffering. This article uses the historical example of the large-scale breakdown of public utilities in an industrial community in Kolyma, Russia, in 1993–94 to bridge the gap between these two poles by describing the sensory mechanics of shattering. Based on insights from the cultural theory of modern senses, I argue that, in Kolyma, shattering involved the restructuring of the inhabitants’ sensorium shaped by the ecology of effortless modern amenities, particularly centralized heating. It occurred through redressing of attention and transformation in the shared materiality, with new substances, such as wastewater or bodily heat, coming into sensory exchanges in defiance of previous social conventions. I conclude by demonstrating the importance of collective shattering for local history, even in the absence of a discernible political turning point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tackles issues central to most academic disciplines, including scientific boundary demarcation, the battle of the faculties, the theory of science, and the conflict between nomothetic and idiographic methodologies, that is, between the two main approaches to science. It does so through discovering and rethinking a Methodenstreit in Swedish political science, an academic dispute involving Professor Rudolf Kjellén, the father of geopolitics, and his greatest rival, Professor S. J. Boëthius. Shortly after retiring from the Johan Skytte Professorship at Uppsala University, S. J. Boëthius published a great but inaccessible work on state theory and its history entitled Om statslivet (On the life of the state, 1916). The book critiques the positivistic and nomothetic (law-searching) approaches of the burgeoning social sciences, which were emancipating themselves from their father, history, and becoming independent disciplines. Boëthius critiqued the nomothetic studies of history, economics, statistics, sociology, and geopolitics for overemphasizing the significance of historical, economic, statistical, sociological, and geographical environments and structures. Thus, the exponents of these new or changing disciplines were criticized for neglecting the most important driving force of human affairs in Boëthius’s mind, namely, the power of personality and individual free will. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The foundation of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) in 1965 is seen as a pivotal moment in the history of British welfare policy heralding a new wave of pressure group activism. Many histories of the organisation focus on the expertise of two of their founder members, Brian Abel-Smith and Peter Towsend. But in foregrounding the role of these academic experts in the early history of CPAG the wider ecosystem of professionals, academics, politicians and activists involved has been overshadowed. This insight this article will argue that contributions to welfare policy and practice can be subsumed in organisational histories, particularly work that is local, smaller scale and practical. Often though not exclusively, women have undertaken such grassroots research and activism. Such work can, and does, contribute to the success of voluntary groups as well as feed into wider intellectual and policy currents. This paper will explore one such case study of this: the crucial but under-documented work of three women campaigners Harriett Wilson, Audrey Harvey and Margaret Wynn. It will illustrate how by combining both intellectually rigorous social research and practical social action they were important both in the formation of CPAG and sociological thinking and practice more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by Aristotle and Goffman this article considers how the study of virtue acquisition may be pursued through an observational theorising about social interactions in institutions. Adapting Goffman’s and Harré’s notions of moral order and moral career, it proposes character education to be a dialogic process requiring negotiation between social actors over time. Taking part in educational institutions, learners learn to perform various roles in a manner by which virtues are to be attributed. But this is not all. Goffman’s and perhaps Aristotle’s accounts are arguably too ‘thin’ to allow for moral change, unless these processes themselves are mastered by learners and may be transcended by them. It is thus by applying the sociological imagination to the institutions we are in, the criticality necessary for true character is developed. The role of sociology in character education is therefore twofold: to inform educators in the creation of institutions and practices that transmit and manifest virtues; and, as an essential part of a virtue-ethics curriculum—giving moral agents the sensitising concepts necessary to understand, negotiate and mould the social frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, Bayesian diagnostic classification modeling has been becoming popular in health psychology, education, and sociology. Typically information criteria are used for model selection when researchers want to choose the best model among alternative models. In Bayesian estimation, posterior predictive checking is a flexible Bayesian model evaluation tool, which allows researchers to detect Q‐matrix misspecification. However, model selection methods using posterior predictive checking (PPC) for Bayesian DCM are not well investigated. Thus, this research aims to propose a novel model selection approach using posterior predictive checking with limited‐information statistics for selecting the correct Q‐matrix. A simulation study was conducted to examine the performance of the proposed method. Furthermore, an empirical example was provided to illustrate how it can be used in real scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU adopted Directive 2010/63/EU, thereby creating an instrument for legally implementing effective measures to regulate animal experimentation. In this framework, the 3Rs principle for replacement, reduction, and refinement of animal experiments proposed by Russell and Burch (1959) is of paramount importance. The highest goal of the 3Rs can be understood as a Culture of Care (CoC), entailing complete renunciation of sentient beings as test subjects. The implementation of a CoC is explicitly mentioned in Recital 31 of the EU-Directive. This article elaborates on historical underpinnings of the CoC concept and uses qualitative social research to trace its characteristics. Data were based on non-standardized survey procedures (topic-oriented, guideline-based expert interviews) and were collected at the management, scientific, supervisory and care levels in relation to animal experimentation. The goal of the qualitative approach is to understand contexts, conditions, strategies, and consequences of the CoC and depict them as a theoretical model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the current dialogue on the development of statistical systems provide adequate scope for transforming official statistics to deliver their social role? Can statistical systems, as currently defined, provide opportunities to people and non-state institutions to influence “what” statistics and “how” should be produced and used? This paper provides a sociological framework to investigate these questions within a broader understanding of the social functions of official statistics as part of public statistics required for a democratic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dating apps are spaces where masculinities are communicated digitally, affecting inequalities around gender expressions. This study aims to identify the masculinities communicated within Grindr tourism interactions in Tel Aviv and analyze how masculinities shape relations among international tourists and locals. Methods consist of interviews and audio diaries with nineteen tourist, local, and immigrant Grindr users in Tel Aviv. Theories of affordances, hegemonic masculinities, and relational sociology are used to analyze the data. In discussion of the results, the concept of mutual exoticization is put forth to interpret the social dynamics valued within Grindr tourism interactions, thereby revealing oppositional fantasies tied to nationalities and masculinities. The study also explores ethnicity’s association with social and erotic capital in digital circulations of a localized Mizrahi masculinity. Findings reveal that while hegemonic masculinities are circulated on Grindr, resistance is also a part of Grindr tourism relations around masculinities. This research concludes by shedding light on masculinity inequalities within digital spaces where different nationalities co-congregate, revealing everyday negotiations of gender regimes. Grindr is the site of both reproduction of and resistance to social inequalities around masculinities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a public theology affirming the normalization of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Religious convictions about human equality and social justice contribute constructively to matters of public concern. While official principles of disability services do, operating practices often do not, accord with a theological vision of God's desire for human flourishing. The analysis summarizes what is going on (many adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities experience restricted lives), employs socio-ecological theory to explain why (shortcomings at multiple levels of civil society disadvantage them), uses theology and sociology to specify what should be going on (they should be able to live 'normal' lives like non-disabled people) and proposes action steps (change in numerous social systems can promote normalization). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scriptural and cultural sources of moral authority within Islam beginning with the Koran are described and their regulations about homosexual behavior summarized. The body of works of literature and media in the social sciences and humanities dealing with issues related to being both an observant Muslim and identifying as LGBT created between the late nineteenth and the early twenty-first centuries is then reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assess the empirical development of scientific homogenization and differentiation processes in terms of group development comparing U.S. and German sociology from 2004 to 2019. We introduce hierarchical multi-layered Bayesian stochastic block models to the issue of scientific group development. Based on publication data from Scopus, we analyze group formation simultaneously as collaboration networks, reference networks, and topical networks. Employing this method allows us to trace back the temporal dynamics of multidimensional group development and formation for each national scientific field. Overall, the findings indicate clear path dependencies in both fields that have been shaping processes of differentiation and homogenization in U.S. and German sociology and that continue to impact on the formation, stabilization, and dissolution of scientific groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mindfulness is increasingly offered in schools around the UK, as well as internationally. Previous research has focused on the efficacy, the implementation, and the wider meaning of mindfulness in education, rather than sociological interests, such as matters of equality and social justice. This article draws on qualitative data from the 'Mapping Mindfulness in the UK' study, to investigate how mindfulness practitioners discuss and address issues of equality and diversity in relation to school-based mindfulness. Lynch and Baker's key dimensions of equality are used to analyse participants' accounts, including on adjustments to curriculum and pedagogy to accommodate diversity, practitioners' responses to socio-emotional vulnerability, and the dynamics of choice and compulsion in the classroom. By highlighting several issues of concern in these areas, the research makes original contributions to sociological understandings of mindfulness and other similar initiatives in schools, whilst offering new insights on theories of equality in education more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives: Maintaining stable blood supplies presents an increasing challenge for blood collection agencies (BCAs). Novel and multidisciplinary approaches and research have been called for to understand the mechanisms underlying the trends. The current body of sociological research on blood donation is a potentially valuable resource, but it is dispersed over different publications and theoretical frameworks. Materials and Methods: We conducted a scoping review of sociological research on voluntary, non‐remunerated blood donation to identify insights and practical applications for researchers and BCAs. Results: Four organizing themes were identified: donated blood, blood donors, organizations and blood service systems. Key challenges associated with the organization of voluntary blood donation exist at the institutional and systems levels, and they may not be readily resolved by interventions focussed solely on the individual donor level. We identified opportunities for organizations to build trust with donors and the public through communications and working with communities to promote inclusion in blood donation. Conclusion: The results support a multidisciplinary approach and research for BCAs to move forward and find novel ways to ensure safe, resilient blood service systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The call for internationally comparable data on disability has been omnipresent in recent disability politics. Several attempts have been made to develop and implement a standardized approach toward disability statistics, with the Washington Group Short Census Questions (WGSQ) being the most prominent. How does this questionnaire 'measure' disability? How do disability statistics translate the diversity of lived experiences into 'objective' numbers? Combining a sociology of quantification and disability studies, this article focuses on the social practices of disability statistics that contribute to the generation of 'disability' as a social category. After contextualizing 'disability' in international organizations' discourses, it uses document analysis to empirically reconstruct statistical experts' recommendations regarding definition, operationalization, data collection, and processing. The analysis shows how binary categorical boundaries are (re)introduced and successively objectified during this process. It also unfolds a risk-based approach that underlies the WGSQ and deviates from a social model of disability. International Organizations like the United Nations use statistics to illustrate that disabled persons do not have the same opportunities as others. For most people, statistics simply mirror reality. However, the article shows that making statistics requires many activities, discussions, and decisions. The research looks in detail at a questionnaire developed by international experts. It shows how people are categorized as a 'person with disabilities' or a 'person without disabilities.' Today, many people and international organizations agree that the way society is built disables persons with impairments. However, this questionnaire does not cover this social dimension. This research is important because it shows that statistics are not politically neutral and have an impact on the lives of disabled persons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages with the question of coordinating action during transitional and politically volatile times, in high-stakes situations. More specifically, I look at a local assembly that was established to campaign for the 'no' vote against regime change in the 2017 constitutional referendum in Turkey, and how it disintegrated at a time when coordinated action was perceived as the only viable strategy by the participants. Based on participant-observation and ethnographic interviews, I argue that instead of framing or strategy, differences in temporal frameworks eroded the basis on which activists usually coordinated their next steps, leading to an unresolvable mismatch in their anticipation of future events, and therefore, in action. I characterize the temporal dynamics of political contestation in such contexts as a 'politics of anticipation,' where futurity and temporality themselves become subjects of political contention. As such, this article contributes to the study of anti-authoritarian social movements, studies of time and temporality, and to the sociology of time and the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a highly prevalent public health challenge and human rights violation. Sociological theories address social structures to understand prevalence and dynamics of IPV against women. This systematic review aims (1) to identify, describe, categorize, and synthesize sociological theories that account for predictors of IPV against women, and (2) to compare and contrast sociological theories of predictors of IPV against women. Following a structured search of nine electronic databases, members of the review team screened title/abstract and full texts against inclusion and exclusion criteria, to identify studies that engaged with theory/ies of predictors of IPV. Review team members extracted data according to a data extraction template developed for the review. Results are presented using a narrative synthesis approach. Following review of 108 included articles, included articles were grouped into sub-theories. The sub-theories provide differing, yet overlapping, accounts of predictors of male perpetration of IPV and women's experience of IPV. Sociological theories primarily engage with exo- and macro-system levels of the social-ecological framework, yet some also address structural influences on individual behaviors. This systematic review fills a gap in theoretical syntheses of sociological theories of predictors of male-perpetrated IPV against women and also provides critical analysis of how these theories overlap and intersect. While sociological theories may not be able to fully explain all aspects of dynamics of male-perpetrated IPV against women, this overview indicates that there are several compelling components of sociological theory that hold explanatory power for comprehending how, where, and why IPV occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study applies resource dependence theory to address the question of how the critical resource dependence relationship emerges in the context of a university's performance agreement. This study focuses on two Nordic universities that have adopted performance agreements while simultaneously using strong performance-based state funding. Resource dependence involves an asymmetry and power imbalance that leads an organisation to believe that it is dependent on a more powerful organisation that has resources under its control. The theory reveals the central role of performance agreements and their associated instruments in the universities' relationship with the ministry and within universities. We found minor differences in Nordic university examples indicating the influence of the performance regimes within the management arena and within the material dimensions of university autonomy. Performance agreements and their related instruments are isolated from the other key realities of universities. Understanding the loose coupling between the agreements and the characteristics of universities are needed to enhance universities' ability to pursue their unique mission in society. Resource dependence theory provides a valuable framework for analysing the dynamics and dependencies that exist between organisations and within loosely coupled organisations, shedding light on the interactions and influences that shape these relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers unique insights into the relationship between education policy and teachers' work. It considers how globally pervasive responsibilising regimes make teachers' work more burdensome. Drawing on interviews with 15 school teachers, this article shows how China's 2021 Double Burden Reduction Policy has reconfigured educators' (class)work practices and pedagogical approaches. Specifically, it unpacks the policy mechanisms that: 1) condense school time and make teachers' work more methodical and 2) prolong teachers' working hours that are dedicated to offering students after-school educational support, thus reducing the demand for shadow education. This article argues that this policy shifts the education burden away from tutorial enterprises and parents and onto the teachers, which illustrates a case of the impact of policy regimes on teachers' work within the broader context of neoliberal globalisation. Moreover, this article produces a novel typological spectrum – submission, substantiation, and scepticism – to capture and understand the diverse ways in which teachers may respond to policy-led changes to their professional work globally. Overall, it generates new knowledge on the impact of homogenising education policies on teachers' work and the heterogeneity of teachers' responses to these policies, thus contributing conceptually to the wider field of policy sociology in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the social theoretical foundations of a sociology of media and communication by making use of the cultural–historical school in psychology. Such perspective gains relevance in digital capitalism and the blurring of production and Internet usage. The paper first revisits Habermas's influential notion of communicative action and agency. Second, it uses activity theory as an alternative, more promising way of theorising because it links communication closer to work. A model of communicative action is introduced and a conceptual link between media and human tool use is established. Third, the paper elaborates on the notion of activity in the digital world and posits that digitalisation can be understood as a 'machinisation' of mental and communicative-coordinative work. The developed perspective, the paper concludes, allows critical media and communication sociology to operate with meaningful concepts of communicative expropriation, exploitation and alienation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just as the Frankfurt School responded to the radicalisation of the working class in Germany and the rise of post-war consumerism in the United States, today, we are confronted by platform monopolies, automated hyper-consumption and technological control. Critical approaches to digital media have exposed the structural coupling of Internet use and capital accumulation for almost two decades. However, many authors building on this tradition can struggle to understand how online social interaction is controlled beyond the worn-out critique of false consciousness or beyond conceptualising all digital activity mediated by data as labour. This paper will attempt to theoretically untangle the Marxian ontology of labour and the Frankfurt School-inspired critique of everyday life. This is not just theoretical nit-picking. Society becomes completely dominated if we accept no difference between wage labour and lifeworld activities. Each contains its internal struggles. The value form regulates both in different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revisiting the history of the development of software and communication technologies, this article demonstrates that while the early techno-utopian theories have been balanced by more sombre approaches, the emancipatory potential of productions whose outputs do not take the commodity form deserves further theoretical reflection. Social form and value-form literature provides a way to rethink publicly financed activities and activities of software communities as a variety of social forms of wealth and productions within capitalist social formations. Public wealth, it is argued, is a useful umbrella concept to approach the forms of wealth in the sphere of software, media and communication. With digitally storable matter, due to its replicability at near zero cost, it is of utmost importance that the state provides an institutional framework, primarily for capital, but also for public wealth, to be coded. In this setting, legal form, its content and function play a key role in the contested reproduction between forms of public wealth and capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociology of media and communications was never explicitly defined – nor was there ever an explicit debate about the sub-field. Not having a clear anchor makes it hard to define what its critical component should be. Nonetheless, a rich yet disconnected tradition of sociology and critical political economy allows flexibility to reconsider communication and social relations in the broader societal dynamics of capitalism. Specifying a critical sociological approach to communication can help better define the role of communication at the micro, mezzo and macro levels of society. The multi-paradigmatic heritage of sociological theory can provide new ways of criticising communication power in contemporary society. Diverse contemporary developments in the critique of political economy give a breadth of understanding of the capitalist mode of production and its internal dynamics. Sociology can add depth to understanding social relations within and beyond the production, distribution and consumption process. This introduction sets out the framework for the special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although today media and communication studies across Latin America are closely linked to critical sociology, this was not always the case. In this article, we explore how the interaction between social communication (which includes communication and media studies) and critical sociology, in the Latin American context, evolved over time. In so doing, we examine how, and in which directions, media theory has developed and how it relates profoundly with critical sociology. This piece is an attempt to summarize this process and look at current contributions that propose more inclusive and participatory media. The key argument that it took a long time for Latin America's media studies to link itself with critical sociology but once that happened, it produced a distinctive school of thought that is counter-hegemonic and directs itself towards the contestation of power and oppression by linking itself with the popular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sourcing practices are among the central research topics within the sociology of the media. Empirical studies have analysed what and who are the major journalistic sources, demonstrating that the selections journalists make not only depend on their subjective choices, but are connected to the norms and routines established in the profession. While invaluable, these studies are primarily media-centric and focused on small-scale investigations, meaning they regularly ignore the social totality in which sourcing is inevitably embedded. Such studies hence also pay too little attention to the external actors that provide 'information subsidies' to journalists. By employing the framework of the public sphere, we show that news sources should be viewed as a topic of central social relevance that touches on wider power relations within society. Sociological approaches should thus be complemented with other critical traditions, for instance the political economy of communication. The latter approach's value is revealed in brief sketches that point to the possibilities of achieving deeper understanding of the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well-established in the literature on the economic dimensions of US college sport that it has become a site of professionalized, value-producing work that does not equitably compensate the campus athletic workers responsible for the production of value therein. Yet, while these interventions make highly compelling political economic claims, few focus on how college athletes themselves experience the system and thus the exploitation they might endure. Drawing on testimony from semi-structured interviews conducted with 25 former college football players, we aim to expand discussions of exploitation beyond debates over compensation through our analysis of the contrast between 'work' and 'play' that exists in the lives of campus athletic workers. Utilizing a non-deterministic Marxian theory of exploitation, this paper explicitly interrogates the way capitalist ideology permeates college football by centering the important tension between 'work' and 'play' that contributes to that ideology as experienced and understood by college football players. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article takes into exam the current literature about Big Data and data capitalism, from the perspective of the critical Internet theory. Particular attention will be placed to the ideas of data exploitation and raw data, which will prove to betray a form of digital fetishism: in short, the focus on the final results of the production process, rather than on the social relations by which the very same process is fueled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]