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They include: (i) ideational labor, (ii) construction labor, and (iii) aspirational costs. Is successful, it was possible only because the ideational necessities for it were met by previous laborers and labor, for example, the labor of feminist philosophers (of all sorts) and men of color philosophers on metaphilosophy and diversity. Alienation, in some form or another, was identified by people working in such areas as comparative philosophy, Eastern philosophical traditions, Africana philosophy, various forms of feminist philosophy, engaged philosophy, philosophies of various sciences (e.g., biology or physics), and even Western "history of philosophy." This underappreciated work load shared by most diverse practioners in the field of philosophy speaks to the way ideational labor can be problematic. Learning the skills that go into epistemological investigation today was part of the training I mentioned above and, as such, was part of the construction labor for "How Is This Paper Philosophy?". [Extracted from the article]

Social scientists, geographers, criminologists, and health scientists are often tasked with finding data to best capture the impact of "community context" on individual outcomes, including residential services, physical resources, and social institutions. One outlet for such data in Canada is Digital Map Technologies Inc. (DMTI) Spatial, which offers a national repository of over one million businesses and recreational points of interest. The database is generated through CanMap Streetfiles, which includes geocodes of each point's precise location. These data are available to researchers from their university data library and Esri Canada, but primarily available to private sector and government markets. That said, the goal of the current paper is to encourage researchers to access this rich yet under‐utilized data source. Each service, business, or resource in the DMTI Spatial database is assigned to a respective category using Standard Industrial Classification codes and North American Industrial Classification System codes. It is not clear, however, which is the more reliable coding criteria. We provide an overview of our review of DMTI Spatial data and take‐away suggestions for using this valuable resource for future research on meso‐level residential markers. Key messages: The goal of this paper is to outline existing data source(s) and measures from DMTI Spatial that might help capture meso‐level residential institutions.We recommend "best practices" for using DMTI Spatial data in researchers' own work to capture neighbourhood resources/amenities, or the social infrastructure of the community using either Standard Industrial Classification codes or North American Industrial Classification System codes.We conclude that Standard Industrial Classification codes in DMTI Spatial enhanced points of interest data are more complete—and more accurate—than North American Industrial Classification System codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water constitutes an important natural and strategic resource, crucial to sustainable development, as well as the social stability and  wellbeing of every economy. The coordinated development of water resource utilisation and economic growth  is currently the focus of attention of social scientists and other representatives of the scholarly community, being one of the key factors for the long‐term development of a country. Based on theories of sustainable development and water resource utilisation, this paper examines the ‘quantity’ and ‘quality’ of water resource utilisation in 19 provinces, municipalities directly under the Central Government, and autonomous regions in the Yangtze River basin from 2006 to 2021, and explores the internal interaction mechanism. First, the decoupling model is used to explore the decoupling relationship between water resource use and economic growth in the Yangtze River Basin, and the LMDI additive index model is used to analyse the corresponding four driving factors. After discovering the interaction between the ‘quantity’ of water resources and economic growth, the ‘quality’ of water resources in the Yangtze River basin was explored, and after measuring the utilisation rate of water resources in the Yangtze River basin, the Tobit model was applied to introduce the explanatory and control variables to deeply analyse the influencing factors of water resources, and the two regulating variables of the digital economy and water endowment are introduced to further analyse the regulating mechanism. The results demonstrate that there is a corresponding ‘weak decoupling‐strong decoupling‐strong decoupling’ stage of development between water resource use and economic growth in the Yangtze River basin, with the corresponding technology effect factor being the most important driver. There is also a corresponding positive regulation impact of the digital economy on the relationship between the two, while water resources endowment has a corresponding negative regulation mechanism, as well as the role of corresponding influencing factors. Relevant recommendations for water resources use have been suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years sexualised drug use, usually referred to as chemsex, has become the object of intense media health‐related panic and increasing academic scrutiny. Critical social scientists have challenged pathologising perspectives, analysing the socio‐cultural and political economy dimensions of chemsex. Against the silence of geographers in this emerging field, the paper develops a geographical relational analysis of chemsex, focusing on the experiences of gay men living with HIV in two Italian cities (Bologna; Milan) and Italian gay men living with HIV in three English cities (Leicester; London; Manchester). Demonstrating the constitutive role of place in the practice of chemsex, the paper frames place relationally, that is, as the encounter between here and there, the material and the virtual, imagined geographies and lived spaces. To emphasise the central role of place and geographical knowledge to understand chemsex, the paper builds on 'weak theory', as it conceives things as open, entangled, connected and in flux, while focusing on ordinary practices and heterogeneity in more‐than‐human worlds. Showing how chemsex represents an embodied, relational geographical encounter among different human and non‐human actors, places (both physical and digital), imaginations and desires, the paper highlights the role of sexual practices in the relational construction of place‐making, therefore calling for an increased engagement with sex itself within the field of geographies of sexualities. The paper introduces a relational geographical perspective to the analysis of chemsex. Demonstrating the constitutive role of place in the practice of chemsex, the paper frames place relationally, i.e. as the encounter between here and there, the material and the virtual, imagined geographies and lived spaces. The paper calls for an increased engagement with the materiality of sex within the field of geographies of sexualities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists appeal to various "structures" in their explanations including public policies, economic systems, and social hierarchies. Significant debate surrounds the explanatory relevance of these factors for various outcomes such as health, behavioral, and economic patterns. This paper provides a causal account of social structural explanation that is motivated by Haslanger (2016). This account suggests that social structure can be explanatory in virtue of operating as a causal constraint, which is a causal factor with unique characteristics. A novel causal framework is provided for understanding these explanations–this framework addresses puzzles regarding the mysterious causal influence of social structure, how to understand its relation to individual choice, and what makes it the main explanatory (and causally responsible) factor for various outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the ocean space has long been ignored by social sciences, the past 15 years have witnessed an increased interest in the marine environment by scholars in Human Geography. The academic literature on the blue economy, almost non‐existent a few years ago, is now burgeoning. The academic debate has offered some critical assessment of blue economy initiatives, but more needs to be done to address the true place of environmental protection within a blue economy, and to put people at the centre of concerns and analyses. Of particular concern, is the ambiguity of the blue economy concept and the confusion over its social and environmental sustainability, which can ultimately result in harmful practices. An important question is then how should social scientists in general and geographers, specifically, engage with these debates, and in particular how should the potential human and social costs of the blue economy be investigated and addressed while assuring justice and fairness? The papers presented here share the vision that environmental sustainability, justice and equality should be at the heart of the blue economy; not just conceptually, but practically too. The papers pursue efforts to identify blue economy risks and the mechanisms through which they occur; assess the place of inclusion and participation in a sustainable blue economy; define what blue economy policies should include to drive just and sustainable practices; and identify where the dominant understandings of the blue economy and its priorities are coming from. In other words, they put considerations of justice and broader cultural structures at the centre of their concerns and analysis. They also highlight the need to bypass geographical boundaries and gain insights from other disciplines and methodologies to grasp such an encompassing concept, and foster not just a blue economy with social justice, but a blue economy for social justice. The academic debate has offered some critical assessment of blue economy initiatives, but more needs to be done to address the true place of environmental protection within a blue economy, and to put people at the centre of concerns and analyses. Of particular concern, is the ambiguity of the blue economy concept and the confusion over its social and environmental sustainability, which can ultimately result in harmful practices. An important question is then how should social scientists in general and geographers, specifically, engage with these debates, and in particular how should the potential human and social costs of the blue economy be investigated and addressed while assuring justice and fairness? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author comments on the medical research titled Separated at Birth: Statisticians, Social Scientists, and Causality in Health Services Research by Bryan Dowd. It highlights that views of statisticians and social scientists on the use of different approaches to causal inference. It investigates Dowd's use of use of different philosophical principles and language concerning causality, rather than the technical aspects of methods themselves which led to the separation theory.

Haila described Singapore as a laboratory for a social scientist given the multiple ways land is used, managed or treated as a source of public revenue. Phang explains how housing has given the bottom 50 per cent of households, wealth equating to the level advocated in Piketty's 'ideal society'. As fixed‐term leases expire, people who own apartments on public land will see their values fall to zero. Inequality will return, challenging the otherwise stable polity. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this paper explores how and why this unique land regime was created, and expose how theoretically inconsistent policies and their ad hoc, pragmatic application has created several rent leakages to a minority of the population who continue to hold freehold land. It offers some alternative strategies better informed by land rent theory, that might be adopted to preserve the benefits enjoyed for now. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014, an intervention paper was published in I The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien i , calling for greater integration of physical and critical human geography, through an intellectual practice termed I critical physical geography i (Lave et al., [16]). Bruce Rhoads, one of the authors of the original CPG Intervention piece (Lave et al., [16]), phrased this critique clearly in a recent paper: [T]he extent to which CPG differs fundamentally from political ecology ... remains unclear. In doing so, the authors advance CPG scholarship by (1) creating new trading zones and creoles distinctive to CPG, and (2) developing and applying their own interactional expertise in ways that contribute to the fuller realization of CPG's three core tenets. Almost a decade after the publication of the initial CPG intervention piece, CPG is expanding into new topics (e.g., predator reintroduction, urban climatology), new methodologies (e.g., dendroprovenancing, network analysis), and new conversations with allied fields (e.g., Black Geographies, Indigenous Geographies, Queer Ecologies). [Extracted from the article]

Microbes, particularly of the viral kind, are currently preoccupying human activity and concerns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although for a long time there has been fear associated with 'germs', notably viruses and bacteria and the diseases they cause, the pandemic has set these fears into overdrive. As serious as this ongoing event is, there are broader interests and important alternative narratives about the microbial world permeating current thinking, based on research that intersects with and includes biopolitical and relational research in geography. In an attempt at balancing the prevailingly negative discourses about microbes and the potential harms they can cause, and to encourage more geographers to contribute to understanding human-microbial relations, this paper draws together recent research across disciplines to discuss the prevalence and role of microbes in environments and in and on human bodies. Drawing on ideas of more-than-human care, the paper shows how geographers and other social scientists can and are already helping reset human-microbial relations, and where further work can productively be done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Chicago sociologist William F. Ogburn's (1886–1959) views about technological unemployment, which were intimately connected to his analysis of the social impacts of technological developments and resulting social problems due to cultural lag. We trace the development of his views as seen through his well‐known 1922 book, Social Change with Respect to Culture and Original Nature, his important contributions to the President's Research Committee on Social Trends (1933), and his lesser‐known pamphlets designed for a broader audience—Living with Machines (1933), You and Machines (1934), and Machines and Tomorrow's World (1938). He used these pamphlets to educate the public about the dangers of new machines and technological unemployment. In doing so, he drew upon sociological analysis in his professional scholarly writings and his long‐standing personal interests in social betterment and social reform. Our analysis also calls into question the adequacy of existing scholarship on Ogburn that has emphasized his commitment to a statistical, dispassionate, and "objectivist" approach to social science research. We call for a revised, richer, and more complex view of Ogburn's work and legacy as one of the nation's leading social scientists during the first half of the 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context is important when considering how racism acts to harm Black youth. Hence, social scientists developed socioecological theories that consider both the individual and the context(s) which shapes them. We used these theories to make sense of the challenges facing Black youth and identify points for intervention. However, these theories were rarely shared with community participants. Theory, at its core, is a way to make sense of the world. Theory shared in an age‐appropriate manner can help youth make sense of their experiences in a way that promotes psychological wellness. This paper describes the intentional sharing of socioecological theory with community members engaged in two community‐based mental health programs. Our team has collaborated closely with community stakeholders to implement and iteratively improve these programs. This first‐person account presents the doctoral students' experiences in engaging community members in using socioecological theory to improve the programs with which they have identified as useful to their community. The article underscores the importance of elevating community voices when engaging in community‐based research and how that engagement is more fundamental as programs become well‐established. Highlights: Community‐based participatory research (CBPR) encourages a more equitable research process.Together, CBPR and socioecological theories contextualize the lived experiences of Black youth.The socioecological theory presented in an age‐appropriate fashion inspired youth‐driven action.Revised curriculums of both CBPR programs reflect this salient interest in community engagement.Ongoing discussion with community members is essential in ensuring CBPR interventions stay relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, geographers and related social scientists have worked intensively against the fetishisation of ruins. The ruin fetish is widely considered as being problematic, because it does not allow us to face the complex reality of processes of ruination and instead turns the ruin into an object with a fixed meaning and transcendental value. This paper supplements this current state of research via the fetish concepts of Walter Benjamin and Jacques Lacan, who both grasp fetishisation through the inscription of fantasy into an object. This fantasy is not inherently bound to the fetish object, but persists depending solely on our standpoint to it. The paper elaborates on the ruin having to be perceived from a certain distance to obtain a status as fetish object by turning into a nostalgic rem(a)inder of loss. While the fetishist maintains a distance to the fetish object, the explorative view of ruins, dismissively coined as "ruin porn," is distinguished by its manner of getting as close as possible to it. Ruin porn is therefore not, as it is often stated, the most recent peak of the ruin fetish, but rather a way of losing sight of the ruin's aura, a way of turning the fetish object into a pile of waste. Artists, on the other hand, bear witness to something that lies beyond the factual givenness of the ruin and thus reintroduce the fetish back into it. Shifting between these ways of fetishising, defetishising, and refetishising ruins, the paper investigates the conditions of the ruin fetish and ultimately calls for a more serious engagement with fantasies as a way of getting with the ruin fetish instead of getting over it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational solidarity has been taken up by feminist scholars, social scientists and activists who discuss or practice solidarity with the plights of different individuals, groups, and communities. This paper addresses transnational solidarity by investigating World Hijab Day, a campaign that shows solidarity with Muslim women by encouraging non‐Muslim women to temporarily wear the hijab. By analysing online activities and social media of the campaign, and investigating public debates surrounding it, the paper explores the centrality of the hijab as the unifying symbol. Results include reflections on the representations of female Muslimness, the hijab and gender roles in the campaign and insights on implications and possibility of transnational digital solidarity. Using the data, and drawing on literature of transnational solidarity, significance and implications of transnational activism in different online and digital geographies of solidarity are interrogated. The conclusion discusses the values and limits of solidarity activism that is based on notions or symbols of similarity or sameness and the role cyberspace plays in transnational reach of the campaign, and in creating online proximity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the invitation of "Polar" magazine for anthropologists to submit articles and essays regarding issues of state administration and bureaucracies. It explores the important roles of the anthropologists and social scientists in investigating the implications of a bureaucratic administration and its effects of to the state. Moreover, the magazine invites scholars to express their views on how citizens should represent the state and about the functions of states agencies.

Although fields such as industrial ecology have advanced our understanding of how cleaner technologies, recycling, and lifestyle changes can reduce the impacts of production and consumption on people and planet, environmental deterioration and social injustices stubbornly persist. New strategies are needed to achieve change in an era of increasing urgency. This paper proposes that academics study the supply chains of individual corporations and link them to environmental and social impacts in geographically specific areas. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have used this approach successfully, issuing reports about corporate activity related to deforestation, sweatshops, and other issues of social concern. But academics, by and large, have studied generic products, industries, and sectors. To verify this, after reviewing approximately 11,000 studies on supply chains, we identified just 27 academic papers that focused on individual corporations. These were primarily by NGOs and social scientists, with no studies by industrial ecologists meeting our review criteria. To uncover corporate supply chains, researchers used two distinct methodological approaches: in situ (interviews, surveys, and surveillance) and ex situ (trade data, document analysis, and maps). In this paper, we explain why and how academics should study the supply chains of individual corporations. This is done by combining approaches from industrial ecology, with those from geography, sociology, and other social sciences to develop a political‐industrial ecology of supply chains. This both physically links actual product flows with their environmental impacts, and explores how they affect justice, equity, and welfare. The work we propose offers clear collaborative linkages with NGOs, industry, and the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has attracted wide scholarly attention. However, discussions among social scientists on BRI have largely premised on the academic infrastructure in English language contexts. Academic research on BRI in China has often been only briefly mentioned as background information in English language publications. This disjuncture between scholarship on BRI inside and outside China reflects the multiple geographies of BRI. Thinking through BRI in English and Chinese scholarship, this paper considers how existing and future factors such as funding sources, language politics, political framing of the research and institutional surveillance may yield different intellectual spaces for understanding the knowledge production of BRI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the course of the twentieth century, social scientists and policy analysts have produced a large volume of literature on whether policies boost fertility. This paper describes the results of a systematic review of the literature on the effects of policy on fertility since 1970 in Europe, the United States, Canada, and Australia. Empirical studies were selected through extensive systematic searches, including studies using an experimental or quasi‐experimental design. Thirty‐five studies were included, covering reforms of parental leave, childcare, health services, and universal child transfers. In line with previous reviews, we find that childcare expansions increase completed fertility, while increased cash transfers have temporary effects. New evidence on parental leave expansions, particularly from Central Europe, suggests larger effects than previously established. High‐earning couples benefit more from parental leave expansions, while expanding childcare programs can reduce social inequalities on other domains. Subsidizing assisted reproductive treatments shows some promise of increasing birth rates for women over the age of 35. Countries that to date have limited support for families can build on solid evidence if they choose to expand these programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Dewey's reaction to the crisis of American Liberalism (Hook, 1969) explicitly aims at reconstructing a new version of social democracy, or democratic socialism (Westbrook, 1991), Laclau's aim is to save the lasting and valuable Marxist contributions from Marxism itself (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; Marchart, 2013, p. 300 et sqq). This emerges quite clearly as one considers both Dewey's theory of the emergence of a democratic public (Dewey, 1927) as well as his theory of social struggle (Dewey, 1919-1920, Dewey and Tufts, 1932). Although Laclau talks of "rhetoric" in reference to the paradigmatic set of linguistic, quasi-automatic mechanisms at the source of the political constitution of popular identities, Dewey understands this process as the enactment of specific forms of "social inquiry." CONCLUSIONS In this paper, we have developed a critical comparison between Laclau's and Dewey's account of the process of constitution of what Laclau calls "political identities.". [Extracted from the article]

Sally and her sister Patty attended school together, both graduating with honors in 1962 from the Westtown School, a private Quaker academy established in 1799, then attending Wellesley College together, Sally majoring in anthropology within an integrated department of sociology and anthropology. After returning to Stockholm, Hannerz sent Sally his unpublished 1970 conference paper titled "Management of Danger", which became the inspiration for Sally's doctoral project in "Dover Square", her pseudonym for the public housing project where she conducted research between March 1975 and September 1976. With a rich body of ethnographic data at hand, Sally returned to the concept of vernacularization in an article (Merry and Stern 2005) and book (Merry 2006), but her understanding of the process shifted significantly. Neither a strident critique of international human rights nor a righteous argument on its behalf, human rights vernacularization provided an empirically grounded framework for understanding the unavoidable complexities in "translating international law into local justice" (Merry 2006; see also Goodale and Merry 2007). [Extracted from the article]

Oil and natural gas activity has grown dramatically over the last decade around the United States because, in part, of increased use of unconventional technologies like hydraulic fracturing. Social scientists have examined the broad array of impacts of this growth to communities disproportionately impacted by activity. This paper contributes to that work by using survey and qualitative interviews to examine the experiences of Coloradans with harm created by oil and gas activity when they live adjacent to production or extraction sites. Using a green criminological and critical criminological framing, our findings illuminate that Coloradans in these samples experienced persistent and patterned harm from oil and gas activity to which they lived proximate. Additionally—paralleling criminological literature on street crime—our findings indicate that official state records on harm prevalence is likely inaccurate and that, instead, a "dark figure" of harm exists. This results because of underreporting of harm by those who experience it which occurs in part, at least for those in our sample, because of a lack of trust or sense of fairness in the regulatory process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to extend debate on the use of blogs as qualitative data, specifically focusing on the issue of consent in research that uses publicly available but personal content. Typically the argument has been made for the need to protect individual writers and engage with these documents in a considered manner that recognises the inherent vulnerability of amateur authors. This paper will argue that a framing of these writers that foregrounds their potential vulnerability, naivety and even ignorance is in fact highly paternalistic, and therefore counter to an ethical approach to research. In seeking to protect authors from harm, we deny their agency and diminish the act of online publication. Further, this approach, prevalent in academia, is at odds with the legal position, and arguably, the weight of social understanding. A reframing of amateur online authors as informed agents not only increases the accessibility of these data to researchers and subsequently policy makers, but also alludes to a need to credit the contribution of authors without the need to seek permission. Ultimately, this paper argues for a presumption of accountability, unless otherwise proven, and an approach to the use of self‐published online material that mirrors the use of other sorts of secondary data with perceived "professional" authors, such as magazine articles, newspaper columns or organisational literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The promises of crowdsourcing volunteered geographic information (VGI) for providing timely information about crises were recognized at least a decade ago. While cartographers and developers hone the accuracy of maps and data, social scientists critique these technologies through various theoretical lenses: in terms of knowledge politics of digital humanitarianism; as tools of neoliberal governance; and as examples of datification supporting automated or remote government. Amidst all these claims, it is time to return to the maps themselves, as empirical examples, considering the information they actually provide. This paper examines crowdsourced and collaborative maps from late 2013 following Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan in the Philippines. Various humanitarian, mapping, and media organizations produced maps in response to the typhoon. Close qualitative analysis of map content queries what these maps reveal about the disaster and whether the maps really produce the information that proponents claim. Analysis of data curated in each map reveals that much of the situational information being mapped is already available elsewhere and that few new ground truths have emerged through these projects. By demonstrating the limitations of the information mediated in these maps, the findings have practical and policy implications for disaster practitioners and digital volunteers intending to help disaster response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although logistics are fundamentally geographical and of critical importance to contemporary society, it is only relatively recently that human geographers and cognate social scientists have started to meaningfully engage with the topic. This paper explores this recent growth of interest, which encompasses the work of transport geographers, economic geographers, labour geographers, mobilities scholars and critical logistics scholars. It synthesises, reviews and evaluates this research around four themes: logistics, cities and regional development; logistics and global production networks; logistics labour; and infrastructure, power and violence. These themes are presented in the loose order in which they have emerged in the literature; while these topics have originated in particular sub‐disciplines, important conversations are now starting to emerge between different kinds of scholars both within and across these themes. These conversations have also increasingly connected geographers into vibrant interdisciplinary debates involving researchers from political science, sociology, anthropology, labour studies, and architecture and planning, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lighting is increasingly recognized as a significant social intervention by both lighting professionals and academic social scientists. However, what counts as 'the social' is diverse and contested, with consequences for what kind of 'social' is performed or invented. Based on a long‐term research programme, we argue that collaboration between sociologists and lighting professionals requires negotiating discourses and practices of 'the social'. This paper explores the quality and kinds of spaces made for 'the social' in professional practices and academic collaborations, focusing on two case studies of urban lighting that demonstrate how the space of 'the social' is constrained and impoverished by an institutionalized division between technical and aesthetic lighting. We consider the potential role of sociologists in making more productive spaces for 'the social' in urban design, as part of the central sociological task of 'inventing the social' (Marres, Guggenheim and Wilkie 2018) in the process of studying it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

B MICHAEL B. BUCHHOLZ b , Dipl.-Psych., (Germany) is a psychoanalyst and social scientist and has published more than 200 papers in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy process research and turned his interests to therapeutic speech with special attention to cognitive linguistics (theory of imaginative speaking, use of metaphors) and conversation analysis. B NANCY M. KRIEGER b (France) is a member of the Association of Graduate Analytical Psychologists (AGAP), and a training and supervising analyst and is currently Director of Program at ISAPZurich. B JOHN MERCHANT b , PhD, (Australia) is a training analyst with ANZSJA and an accredited supervisor with the Psychology Board of Australia. [Extracted from the article]

Abstract: The decarbonisation of energy systems is leading to a reconfiguration of the geographies of energy. One example is the emergence of community energy, which has become a popular object of study for geographers. Although widely acknowledged to be a contested, capacious, and flexible term, “community energy” is commonly presented as singular, bounded, and localised. In this paper, we challenge this conception of community energy by considering evidence about the role and influence of three categories of actors: community, state, and private sector. We demonstrate how community energy projects are unavoidably entangled with a diversity of actors and institutions operating at and across multiple scales. We therefore argue that community energy is enabled and constituted by trans‐scalar assemblages of overlapping actors, which demands multi‐sectoral participation and coordination. We point to the need for further academic attention on the boundaries between these actors to better understand the role of different intermediary practices and relationships in facilitating the development of decentralised energy systems with just outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Geographers have long reflected on our discipline's colonial history. Both Indigenous and non‐Indigenous geographers have discussed ways of engaging Indigenous geographies and sought new ways of opening and expanding spaces for Indigenous peoples and Indigenous ways of knowing and being in our discipline. Like many social scientists, geographers name and frame this work in different ways; of late, decolonizing concepts and practices are increasingly deployed. As documented by especially Indigenous scholars, however, the discipline has yet to achieve much semblance of decolonization. This paper takes as a starting point that, despite good intentions, efforts at decolonizing geography are inherently limited because colonization continues to structure the field of geography and the academy more broadly. We begin by placing ourselves in conversations about Indigenous geographies and colonial violence, using this placement as a jumping off point for discussing ways geographers past and present approach decolonization. We pay particular attention to ways theories and articulations about decolonization may be falling short. Second, we offer a critical analysis of decolonization in relation to settler colonial power, including theories and praxes of engaging Indigeneity and Indigenous peoples and places. We discuss Indigenous geographies, what they mean, and to whom they have those meanings. We then turn to Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous ways of being and living in the world, problematizing how within more purely conceptual realms and often by non‐Indigenous peoples and geographers, these can be uncoupled or disconnected from ways decolonization is circulated and lived. We conclude with cautions and suggestions, based especially on provocations of Indigenous scholars, about ways geographers might unsettle our work in ongoing efforts toward decolonizing our discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A large share of human activity is now routinely captured and stored by commercial organisations as consumer data. These new forms of data have provided many new and exciting opportunities for understanding population trends at fine spatial scales. In many settings, they have reduced our dependence on theory and traditional modelling approaches and fundamentally changed how geographers approach producing representations of the population. However, consumer data are typically created for commercial benefit and do not have academic standard data quality controls, and so, in repurposing the data for social research, we encounter inherent issues of veracity. Without an understanding of uncertainty, social scientists can risk overstretching consumer datasets beyond the specific populations or phenomena they directly pertain to. Moreover, the technical characteristics of large and complex datasets also make it challenging to generate valid information efficiently. Therefore, this paper reviews the major challenges to harnessing consumer data to produce valid spatial representations of the population at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Controlled experiments ranging from laboratory experiments to field experiments are becoming increasingly important within systems engineering and design (SE&D) research. Controlled experiments provide unique capabilities for testing hypotheses, and guiding the development of scientific theories, but their potential is not being fully exploited. As the systems engineering research community embraces different research methods commonly adopted in other domains, there is a need for understanding the role and appropriateness of those methods within the research process. While the design of experiments in SE&D research is not unique per se, we contend that aspects of representativeness in the SE&D context pose different experimental design challenges than do the problems typically studied by experimental social scientists. There is therefore a need to translate established practices to the SE&D context, and also belay widely held concerns about the value of experiments in SE&D research. To address this need, the goals of the paper are to discuss the potential role of controlled experiments in systems engineering and design research, to review the benefits and limitations of different types of experiments, and to highlight the key issues in validating experimental studies. The taxonomy and the discussion on validation build on the rich history in social and behavioral sciences, with specific adaptation to the SE&D context. The discussion is anchored in specific examples from the authors’ own research on open innovation in systems engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists have long debated the impact of interest group coalitions on public policies. While views on coalition impacts range from dominance to impotence, an emerging perspective suggests that coalitions have impacts under certain conditions. In this paper, we join and expand that perspective by arguing that coalitions have a conditional impact on public policies through ballot measures. Specifically, we argue that coalitions will have greater impact on ballot measure outcomes in non-presidential election years, when the stakes involved are high, and when the goals of the measure are diverse. We test these hypotheses with analyses of a dataset of over 2,400 ballot measures on spending for open space at the state and local level between 1988 and 2014. We find strong support for our hypotheses. The findings have implications for scholarly debates on interest groups and coalitions, for the role of ballot measures in American public policy, and for assessments of open space and conservation in American society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agri-Environment Schemes (AESs) are seen as important instruments in the delivery of sustainable countryside management. Central to the success of AESs are farmer participation and engagement. Social scientists, and geographers in particular, have now paid significant attention to these themes and this paper seeks to survey some key developments within this work. The paper begins by reflecting on the key themes emerging from AES 'adoption' research, and then discusses a recent strand of AES research which has paid specific attention to the ways that farmers socially construct their environments and identities. The paper then considers whether, after several decades in place, there is evidence from the extant literature that AESs are serving to change famer attitudes and farming cultures. Finally, the article concludes by sketching out potentially fruitful avenues for future farmer-AES research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-World War II era was one of great triumph for American linguists-and yet linguistics is all but absent from the historical literature on postwar social science. This paper aims to illuminate this curious situation: to understand its provenance, evaluate its merits, and contextualize it broadly. I argue that the historiographic lacuna results from two factors: (1) the opt-out of linguists from the wider American social science community, and (2) historical-developmental and -orientational factors that stand linguistics apart from the social science mainstream. The resultant isolation of linguistics has led to a parallel isolation in the historical literature. Ultimately, this paper poses a pivotal and timely question: How is the postwar social science space construed within the existing historiographic framework, and how should it be construed in order to maximize understanding? I propose a rethink of the received historiography centered on intellectual transformations and cross-disciplinary integration. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on attempts to understand how the curriculum and pedagogy can help to reduce inequalities in the outcomes of schooling between those from higher and lower socio-economic backgrounds. In the 1970s, the author was involved with Michael F.D. Young and others in the development of the so-called ‘new’ sociology of education. Much of this work entailed laying bare the assumptions underlying the school curriculum and demonstrating how the selection of school knowledge was implicated in the reproduction of social inequalities. During the 1980s in England the curriculum was overtly politicised by the Thatcher government but the interests of sociologists of education moved increasingly away from the sociology of school knowledge to focus instead on the sociology of education policy. This paper identifies a recent tendency on the part of sociologists of education to return to the ‘knowledge question’. In particular, it examines Young's own role in this and his attempts to revisit and revise of his earlier position. Contemporary developments in curricular policy in England and Northern Ireland are then outlined and discussed. Finally, the paper considers whether the work of Basil Bernstein, particularly his concepts of classification/framing and recognition/realisation rules, might help us to address one of the prevailing political problems of many modern education systems — the systematic failure of socially disadvantaged pupils to perform well at school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Matthew effect has that recognition is bestowed on researchers of already high repute. If recognition is measured by citations, this means that often-cited papers or authors are cited more often. I use the statistical theory of the growth of firms to test whether the fame of papers and authors indeed exhibits increasing returns to scale, and confirm this hypothesis for the 100 most prolific economists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an account of the origins and formation of the UK Research Councils’ Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) programme and its approach to promoting interdisciplinary working between social and natural scientists. The programme is set in the context of broader developments in science policy, including a policy discourse centred upon sustainable development and the knowledge economy and associated demands for greater accountability in science. Interdisciplinarity promises research that will be more relevant and responsive to public needs and concerns. In describing the provenance of the RELU programme, therefore, the paper seeks to lay out the different stages in its initiation and design to show how, to varying degrees, these were open to external scrutiny and influence. The process of developing the programme illustrates that it is not straightforward to make research agendas and funding more transparent and accountable. It also provides insights into the challenges that interdisciplinarity and accountability present to established science institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a conceptual investigation into the notion of a network as a form of social organization for the production of excellent research. This metaphor has been particularly attractive to social scientists and managers of cooperative research, because it seems to connote what is organic, flexible and libratory in communication and in the philosophy of language. The paper criticizes this preconception. In particular, it shows that, while Wittgenstein's philosophy may indeed encapsulate the virtues that partisans for the networking trope admire, they are mistaken in thinking that they can claim his authority for the use they make of this figure. The thought that they can do so results from inattention to features of the development of his ideas about language, particularly his fervent anti-scientism. I conclude that an over-stretched use of the metaphor obscures its constraining signification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists doing fieldwork in humanitarian situations often face a dual imperative: research should be both academically sound and policy relevant. We argue that much of the current research on forced migration is based on unsound methodology, and that the data and subsequent policy conclusions are often flawed or ethically suspect. This paper identifies some key methodological and ethical problems confronting social scientists studying forced migrants or their hosts. These problems include non-representativeness and bias, issues arising from working in unfamiliar contexts including translation and the use of local researchers, and ethical dilemmas including security and confidentiality issues and whether researchers are doing enough to ‘do no harm’. The second part of the paper reviews the authors' own efforts to conduct research on urban refugees in Johannesburg. It concludes that while there is no single ‘best practice’ for refugee research, refugee studies would advance its academic and policy relevance by more seriously considering methodological and ethical concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revises David Ellis's information-seeking behavior model of social scientists, which includes six generic features: starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, and extracting. The paper uses social science faculty researching stateless nations as the study population. The description and analysis of the information-seeking behavior of this group of scholars is based on data collected through structured and semistructured electronic mail interviews. Sixty faculty members from 14 different countries were interviewed by e-mail. For reality check purposes, face-to-face interviews with five faculty members were also conducted. Although the study confirmed Ellis's model, it found that a fuller description of the information-seeking process of social scientists studying stateless nations should include four additional features besides those identified by Ellis. These new features are: accessing, networking, verifying, and information managing. In view of that, the study develops a new model, which, unlike Ellis's, groups all the features into four interrelated stages: searching, accessing, processing, and ending. This new model is fully described and its implications on research and practice are discussed. How and why scholars studied here are different than other academic social scientists is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses a conundrum that merits scholarly attention--why social scientists' ability to generate high quality research has outpaced their ability to disseminate research into the policymaking process. The paper describes Family Impact Seminars, a series of seminars, briefing reports, and follow-up activities that provide up-to-date, solution-oriented information to state policymakers. In support of the proposed "three-communities" theory, the utilization of research in policymaking appears to depend upon several pragmatic practices and procedures, ten which are detailed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists have long been interested in understanding how socioeconomic status (SES) affects the way people think, feel, and behave. Neuroscience has provided new tools (fMRI, EEG, and ERP) to allow us to answer these questions, demonstrating, for example, that lower SES is linked to stronger mirror neural responses, greater mentalizing, enhanced vigilance to threat, and lesser likelihood to spontaneously infer traits based on limited information. The present paper (i) reviews evidence that SES affects neural responses involved in a wide range of psychological processes, (ii) highlights the value of neural methods in investigations of SES, (iii) discusses cultural neuroscience as a potential framework to understand why SES has the effects it does on the brain, (iv) considers previous developmental neuroscience findings regarding SES and attention in light of cultural neuroscience, and (v) discusses future challenges, opportunities, and questions for this emerging field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper re-examines Kurt Lewin's classic leadership studies, using them as a concrete example to explore his wider legacy to social psychology. Lewin distinguished between advanced "Galileian" science, which was based on analysing particular examples, and backward "Aristotelian" science, which used statistical analyses. Close examination of the way Lewin wrote about the leadership studies reveals that he used the sort of binary, value-laden concepts that he criticised as "Aristotelian". Such concepts, especially those of "democracy" and "autocracy", affected the way that he analysed the results and the ways that later social scientists have understood, and misunderstood, the studies. It is argued that Lewin's famous motto--"there is nothing as practical as a good theory"--is too simple to fit the tensions between the leadership studies and his own views of what counts as good theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how Ulrich Beck's world-risk-society theory ( WRST) and Bruno Latour's Actor- Network Theory ( ANT) can be combined to advance a theory of cosmopolitics. On the one hand, WRST helps to examine 'cosmopolitan politics', how actors try to inject cosmopolitanism into existing political practices and institutions anchored in the logic of nationalism. On the other hand, ANT sheds light on 'cosmological politics', how scientists participate in the construction of reality as a reference point for political struggles. By combining the WRST and ANT perspectives, it becomes possible to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of cosmopolitics that takes into account both political and ontological dimensions. The proposed synthesis of WRST and ANT also calls for a renewal of critical theory by making social scientists aware of their performative involvement in cosmopolitics. This renewal prompts social scientists to explore how they can pragmatically support certain ideals of cosmopolitics through continuous dialogues with their objects of study, actors who inhabit different nations and different cosmoses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental social scientists have recently begun to use the term `forest transition' to describe how forest cover changes as economic development occurs in nations. The hypothesized transition occurs as follows. An initial surge in economic activity in impoverished societies spurs deforestation, but as economic activity continues to intensify and cities grow larger, a `turnaround' occurs, and deforestation gives way to reforestation. This paper uses cross-national data from five successive surveys of world forest resources to assess this empirical claim. A turnaround in forest cover trends does occur in a significant number of nations. The paper also evaluates two explanations for the turnaround, a wood scarcity hypothesis derived from microeconomic theory and an industrialization hypothesis linked to central place theory, it finds period specific support for the industrialization hypothesis. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of these findings for proposals to alleviate the bio-diversity crisis through programs of reforestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in the structure and dynamics of sociology as a discipline has led to recurrent attempts to measure the prestige, productivity, and quality of education of the various sociology departments. While several previous papers have suggested the potential value of the Science Citation Index (SCI) as a measure of scientific standing, few attempts have been made to utilize a citation-based measure of scientific prestige. This paper considers the meaning of the citation in science and in stratification theory. Procedures are described whereby citations to individual sociologists and journal are employed to yield rankings of departments of sociology and journals. The differences between these rankings and other rankings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between class, health and life-styles, and to what extent does health-related knowledge influence subsequent behaviour? These issues have been a source of considerable debate for medical sociologists and others concorned with promoting 'healthier' life-styles over the years, Yet despite a wealth of empirical material, there has been little attempt to theorise this relationship between class, health and lifestyles and the associated issues of structure and agency, accounts and action it raises. This paper attempts to rectify this lacuna through a critical discussion of the work of Pierre Bourdieu, and its relevance to the class, health and life-styles debate. In particular, attention is paid to Bourdieu's analysis of the logic of practice, his concepts of habitus and bodily hexis, and the search for social distinction in the construction of (health-related) life-styles. The paper concludes with a critical commentary on these issues and the relative merits of Bourdieu's analysis for the sociology of health and illness. It is argued that despite certain limitations regarding issues of agency and 'choice', Bourdieu's analysis does indeed shed important light on the health and lifestyles debate, and that further bridge-building exercises of this nature between mainstream theory and the sociology of health and illness are both necessary and fruitful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have drawn on anthropological studies of gift exchange systems to help develop models of exchange in social life. This paper presents a reconsideration of the relatively neglected Maussian view of gift and commodity exchange, drawing on both Mauss's The Gift and recent work by anthropologists who have extended his ideas. The Maussian model illustrates the partiality of some sociological models of exchange by showing that people, objects, and social relations form a whole that is created and recreated in different ways when people transact with each other in gift and commodity relations. The paper concludes with an illustration of the utility of Mauss's model, showing how it can extend recent sociological discussions of the social meaning of objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the history of the sociology of knowledge in light of the two problems that have systematically thwarted all efforts to fulfil its promise: the self-defeating relativization of knowledge and the circularity of knowledge and society that the theories imply. The paper looks at the strategies that social scientists have developed to overcome (and sometimes ignore) these problems, and building on the work of Clifford Geertz and Thomas Kuhn advances the concept of a cultural paradigm as an alternative approach. To clarify the questions of the sociology of knowledge and exemplify the usefulness of the new perspective, the paper briefly explores the historical and cultural contexts that helped constitute an idea of the person as a player of roles. Shakespeare notwithstanding, the perception of the person as a role-player, the paper suggests, is to be seen as a central element in the production of modernity - of an eminently American, eminently middle-class sort of modernity whose development it reflected and helped to shape. The incorporation rather than the denial of relativism and circularity within this framework are discussed in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]