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ABSTRACT Truth is a thorny issue for the sociology of knowledge. In emphasizing social influence on knowledge production, sociologists tend to disavow the objectivity of truth and slide down the slope of the consensus theory and the nihilism of post‐truth. In fighting science denial, on the other hand, sociologists often find themselves aligning with the correspondence theory and the naïve notion of naked truth. The aim of this article is to advance a position that recognizes social influence on knowledge attainment without obviating the objectivity in truth. The key to this argument lies in the concept of existential embedment that unifies objectivity and subjectivity in human struggles for survival and prosperity, from which truth originates and to which truth contributes. Existential embedment also anchors knowledge by providing the foundation for truth validation. Depending on the modalities of knowledge attainment, truth is divided into four types with varying degrees of veridical certitude, each having its own criterion for validity assessment. Knowledge that passes the validation test is accepted as truth within the horizon of the given realm of existential embedment, which may change as the existential activity of the knower changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have long identified job pressure as a central work-related stressor with far-reaching consequences for workers' well-being, their families, and organizations. However, surprisingly little empirical work examines how schedule control influences job pressure in a longitudinal framework—or the status-based contingencies in the resource functions of schedule control. Drawing on five waves of population-level panel data from the Canadian Work, Stress, and Health Study (2011–2019), I use fixed-effects analyses to examine the relationship between schedule control and job pressure, examining whether schedule control operates differently across occupations (professionals versus non-professionals) and levels of authority in the workplace. My findings help advance the sociological study of work-stress research by resolving competing predictions about the relationship between schedule control and job pressure across status. While others have argued the possibility for schedule control to intensify work-related pressures, I find that schedule control helps reduce job pressure. However, my results reveal that schedule control does not benefit all workers equally: it has unequal upsides for higher status workers. These discoveries sharpen existing knowledge about the resource functions of schedule control and are discussed in light of synthesizing key ideas from the sociology of work, and the stress process and job demands-resources models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Syed Farid Alatas is a Malaysian sociologist who has been highly influential in discussions about decolonising knowledge. He has also continued the legacy of his esteemed father, Syed Hussein Alatas, by furthering 'the School of Autonomous Knowledge' in the Malay Archipelago and beyond. This article presents a wide-ranging, comprehensive and rich dialogue between Farid and Leon Moosavi. In this conversation, pertinent questions are asked: How does Farid's approach to decolonising knowledge differ from other decolonial scholars? What exactly does Farid mean when he talks of 'intellectual imperialism', 'alternative discourses' and 'academic dependency'? This dialogue also explores Farid's extensive engagement with the Islamic/Muslim sphere, including topics such as: Ibn Khaldun, Muslim revivalism, Muslim sectarianism and the Islamisation of knowledge. The discussion also explores some potential critiques of Farid's intellectual contributions with challenging questions: Can Farid's theoretical ideals be applied in 'the real world' or are they confined to an audience of intellectual elites? Is Farid anti-Western? Or, actually, does his work inadvertently fall into the trap of Westerncentrism? This article offers a unique insight into the intellectual biography of one of the most notable social theorists of the current era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how messages for health and PE ([H]PE) within English and Welsh curricula are being re-legitimised through distinct performance and competence pedagogic models. Drawing upon Bernstein's sociology of knowledge (Bernstein, 1996. Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique. Taylor and Francis; 2000. Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research and critique (revised ed.). Rowman and Littlefield) data was generated through a deductive content analysis of the contemporary statutory English National Curriculum for Physical Education (NCPE) and the new Curriculum for Wales (CfW), Health and Well-Being Area of Learning and Experience (HWB-AoLE). Findings illustrate how the current English and Welsh curricula are re-legitimising discourses for (H)PE through a more prominent emphasis placed on competency models whereby the educator and learner are given greater autonomy to control the transmission and acquisition of (H)PE messages. However, the curriculum documents are beset with contradictions that to an extent reproduce discourses of performativity and individualisation. Consequently, the paper emphasises the need for educators and policymakers to be given the opportunity for critical dialogue on the implications of re-legitimising messages through competency models for all educator and learner identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adorno’s conception of ideology was denounced by Habermas as incompatible with a viable form of social critique. By conflating ideology and the ‘identity principle’ inherent to modern Western reason, he argues, Adorno offered an overly negative characterisation of modernity and failed to recognise its rational potential. This paper questions this line of criticism by revisiting Adorno’s position. While he does sometimes associate ideology with identity-thinking, this association does not exhaust his views on the subject. For Adorno, ideology is just as much a matter of Identität as a matter of Schein, or illusion, and its practical effects. Moreover, he views ideology as an intrinsically dynamic concept, whose definition has changed throughout human history. Drawing on his late sociological writings, I distinguish three major stages in the development of the concept of ideology, namely (a) ideology as simple illusion, a definition associated with the Enlightenment and expanded by the so-called sociology of knowledge; (b) ideology as necessary illusion, invoked by Marx to capture the structural logic of capitalism; and (c) ideology as disillusionment, related to the positivism of late capitalist society. Finally, I reflect on what this survey reveals about the relationship between illusion and identity in Adorno’s theory of ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a book review of "Spaces on the Spectrum: How Autism Movements Resist Experts and Create Knowledge" by Catherine Tan. The book explores two social movements focused on autism: the parent-centered alternative biomedical movement and the self-advocacy-centered autistic rights movement. The movements have different perspectives on autism, with the autistic rights movement framing autism as a form of neurodiversity and the alternative biomedical movement viewing it as a sickness caused by environmental insults. The book provides detailed insights into the experiences and perspectives of these movements and highlights the need for broader cultural attitudes and support for individuals with autism. [Extracted from the article]

Neoliberal critiques of university-based teacher education programmes have led to policy changes such as the rise of alternative certification programmes, bringing in to question the role of the university in teacher education. Concomitantly, such changes problematise the place of knowledge and evidence in teacher education. This issue is of particular importance given extant debates about the place of propositional knowledge about children with special educational needs in inclusive education. This paper explores these debates in terms of recent international trends in policy and practice in teacher education for inclusion and argues for an explicit role for universities as custodians and curators of propositional knowledge in pre and in service teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language shapes diverse cultures and creates natural barriers between human societies. The landscape of nonprofit and philanthropic studies in non-English languages is barely charted, impeding the globalization of this research field. This project (a) describes the topics shared between English and Chinese scholarship on nonprofits and philanthropy and (b) explores why English scholarship is cited in Chinese journal articles from five aspects: rationale of scholarship, novelty, relevance, social network, and reputation. The English articles cited by Chinese scholars tend to: (a) focus on instrumentality but not expressive values, (b) develop rather than disrupt existing paradigms, and (c) be relevant to topics popular in Chinese literature and have authors with Chinese scholarly connections. In general, Chinese scholars tend to cite English articles that are value-neutral, non-disruptive, and native. Theoretical and methodological implications for examining nonprofit studies in other languages are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document provides a list of contributors to the journal "Sociological Inquiry." The contributors come from various academic backgrounds and research interests, including labor sociology, social computing, historical sociology, inequality and injustice, educational tracking, social work, racial biases, oppression, public administration, health policy, poverty governance, ethnic inequality, sexual orientation identity development, and many more. The contributors represent diverse perspectives and offer valuable insights into a wide range of sociological topics. [Extracted from the article]

Joy is a crucial element of people's everyday lives that has been understudied by sociologists. This is particularly true for scholarship about transgender people. To address what we term a joy deficit in sociology, we analyze 40 in-depth interviews with trans people in which they were asked what they find joyful about being trans. Their responses demonstrate the methodological and theoretical importance of asking about joy. Four main themes emerged from the interviews. First, interviewees easily answered the question about joy. Second, contrary to common assumptions, we found that transgender people expressed joy in being members of a marginalized group and said that they preferred being transgender. Third, embracing a marginalized identity caused the quality of their lives to improve, increasing self-confidence, body positivity, and sense of peace. Finally, being from a marginalized group facilitated meaningful connections with other people. Our findings demonstrate a vital need to address the joy deficit that exists in the sociological scholarship on transgender people specifically, and marginalized groups more generally. Bridging the sociology of knowledge and narratives, we show how accentuating joy offers nuance to understandings of the lived experiences of marginalized people that has been absent from much of sociological scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the intersection role of students' epistemic beliefs and gender in argumentative essay writing. In total, 148 undergraduate students from a Dutch university followed an argumentation module, filled out the epistemic beliefs survey, and wrote an argumentative essay. Results showed that students' beliefs about the Internet-specific justification of knowledge did not influence essay performance. On the other hand, beliefs about the nature of scientific knowledge influenced their argumentative essay writing. Overall, there were no gender differences in argumentative essay writing. However, female students outperformed male students in taking a position on the topic. The interaction effects of beliefs about the Internet-specific justification of knowledge and gender in argumentation performance were neutral. There was, however, an intersection effect of students' epistemic beliefs about the nature of scientific knowledge and their gender in argumentation performance. We discuss these results and provide suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political battles over strip clubs' existence are informed by research, but existing literature neglects a central component of strippers' work. This study analyzes strippers' pole work and heeds dancers' calls to incorporate their voices. It provides an overview of why strippers engage in this skilled and often voluntary physical labor (drawing from social learning theory), and portrays the functions of poling utilizing concepts from the sociology of work. The study is based on ethnographic data, primarily in-depth interviews with strippers. It develops ideas in the sociology of work by demonstrating how in a non-standard work environment like strip clubs, relative autonomy allowed workers to diversify the end game or work goals despite controlling and self-alienating aspects of the job. Strippers were able to engage in what we refer to as skill optioning (making the most of their skills to leverage gains). The result was that some strippers developed the physical skill of poling and performed for more than monetary rewards; it helped give their work more meaning and enjoyment. Poling built physical capital, minimized emotional labor, developed social networks, and provided psychological benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a book review of "Anonymous: The Performance of Hidden Identities" by Thomas DeGloma. The book explores the concept of anonymity and pseudonymity as performative practices and their connection to institutional structures. It discusses how performing anonymously can be both freeing and dangerous, protecting vulnerable individuals and groups while also emboldening harmful individuals and shielding powerful institutions. The book covers various examples of cover identities used for protection or subversive acts, as well as the anonymity of social systems and the impersonality of bureaucratic institutions. It also examines the anonymity of types and categories, particularly in relation to power dynamics and social institutions. The review praises the book for its scholarship, creativity, and engaging writing style, recommending it for graduate-level courses in social theory and formal sociology. [Extracted from the article]

This article is a conversation between sociologist Bridget Fowler and Les Back. Bridget discusses her life and career in sociology, including her working-class background and exposure to different social perspectives. She also talks about her interest in the sociology of literature and her admiration for scholars like Raymond Williams and Pierre Bourdieu. The conversation emphasizes the importance of social theory and the complexities of sociological research. The text also discusses various topics related to sociology, feminism, and the author's personal experiences, as well as the concept of collective memory and its relevance to obituaries. The author argues for a more democratic and inclusive approach to obituary writing. [Extracted from the article]

This article aims to bring to light about the women and their features, based on Freud, Lacan and others and authors, just as feminicide are portrayed by media and several news blogs. Having the comprehension the press, in general, contributes to build public opinion when brings topics from this kind. Feminicide is characterized as murdering women by men, simply, because they are women, in other words, by their gender condition. In this sense, the male domination characterize itself, by the owning the woman as an object. The violence is a social factor that has been in the human society for centuries and in the contemporary, the journalistic work is partial and suppose to enforce stenotypes that victimize the woman who is victim of structural chauvinism. Many fields of knowledge such as the various approaches to psychology, legal knowledge and sociology portray this topic from their perspectives, in this sense, the essays foresees the reading of these facts that has occurred from the perspective of psychoanalysis, that is about the constitution of social connections, considering their particularities, creating a reflection in the metapsicological field, trying to understand the personal psychism by motivation of committing feminicide, considering the evidences it come from the social manifestation. [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]

The article focuses on magpie theory, an innovative approach to theoretical work that integrates fragmented and eclectic sources of knowledge. It explores how assembling diverse, often disjointed pieces of information can reveal new insights and perspectives, offering a dynamic and flexible framework for understanding complex phenomena. It encourages a critical engagement with the limitations of traditional theories and promotes a more open-ended exploration of ideas.

From the beginning, a science-based approach to questions of the future and – more precisely – thinking in alternative futures was in latent conflict with the official ideology of the German Democratic Republic, according to which East German society (and indeed, the whole humankind) was heading towards a communist future. During the 1960s, however, prognostics – the socialist type of futures studies – fitted well into the ambition of political leaders to foster economic development by promoting scientific-technological progress and adopting new management systems of the national economy. Prognostics was to a certain extent institutionalized and obtained in parts a cybernetic underpinning, but ideological constraints on knowledge never vanished. Moreover, prognostics had to distinguish itself clearly from "late-capitalist" futurology. With the reorientation of politics after Walter Ulbricht lost power, prognostics was cut back as was its cybernetic underpinning. As the official belief in the communist future eroded during the 1980s, there was no longer any room for governmental foresight. Futures thinking was taken up by the dissident movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens at the point of interchange between scholarly communities? We examine this question by investigating the case of growing ties between historical sociology and ethnography, two social scientific methods that once seemed to have little in common. Drawing on methodological writings by ethnographers and original interviews with practicing historical sociologists, we argue that these ties have been shaped by structural and methodological homologies between the two disciplines. Structurally, ethnography and historical sociology are similarly positioned in sociology more broadly, as enterprises with sometimes-tense relationships with dominant assumptions of the social sciences. Methodologically, both ethnographers and historical sociologists face the challenges of bounding the research process, navigating access to data, analyzing and retaining data while "in the field," and overcoming cultural distance between themselves and the worlds they are studying. Taken together, these findings extend work in the sociology of science and knowledge and suggest some key conditions for intellectual efflorescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzing the meaning structure of literary texts, i.e. reconstructing their semantic inner logic and its context-sensitive interpretation, remains one of the core tasks of literary studies. When reflecting on the self-descriptions of societies, the sociology of knowledge and literature comes into play. If literary research increases knowledge of the effect and function of descriptions of society, it assumes a shared responsibility for the semantic "environmental" conditions, under which society observes itself. It is thus responsible for shaping the narrative patterns by which societies interpret themselves, i.e. collective or group semantics, as well as for associated reductions in complexity. Niklas Luhmann recommended that the sociology of knowledge should formulate such a "theory of society observing and describing itself" (1995, 154), but the cultural studies approach to the term "knowledge" prevalent in German-language studies between 2000-2015 is not necessarily conducive to this approach. This article reflects the aspect of "knowledge" from the two sides mentioned in the title and corners it praxeologically and textualistically, i.e. in its dynamic, social micro and macro dimension (between cognitive psychology and sociology) and in its textualist dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article "Trade and Nation: How Companies and Politics Shaped Economic Thought," Emily Erikson explores the historical development of economic thought and its relationship to morality and power. Erikson argues that early medieval economic thinking was primarily concerned with morality and justice, but during the 17th century, English economic thought underwent a radical change, focusing on growth and national prosperity. Erikson suggests that this shift was influenced by the rise of English chartered corporations, which created a public sphere where merchants discussed commerce and trade. The article also highlights the legitimation strategies used by merchants to advocate for their interests and the impact of interaction and power on the development of economic thought. This analysis challenges the traditional view of Adam Smith as the father of classical economics and emphasizes the importance of incorporating morality into market discussions. [Extracted from the article]

cognitive materialism is a theoretical and methodological framework developed in Latin America for analyzing the relationship between capitalism and knowledge, particularly in the context of productive processes. Based on a set of original categories, it offers a novel interpretation of the history of capitalism and provides new insights into contemporary phenomena. Moreover, cognitive materialism proposes a distinctive ontology and gnoseology, reexamining classic problems and concepts such as dialectics, ideology, and exploitation. However, for the sake of simplicity, this article does not delve into these aspects. Instead, it provides an overview of cognitive materialism, focusing on some of its fundamental notions and classifying the literature that has adopted these ideas over the past decade. The result is a body of theoretical and empirical research that has broadened the scope of the original categories. Specifically, the reviewed literature is organized around four thematic axes. The first axis outlines the theoretical dialogues that gave rise to cognitive materialism. The second axis presents the fundamental notions of this social theory, including its conceptualization of capitalism. The third axis examines the theoretical and empirical approaches of cognitive materialism to the relationship between production and appropriation of knowledge, with an emphasis on the different forms of intellectual property. This axis often includes an analysis of center-periphery relations concerning these appropriation processes. Finally, the fourth axis encompasses theoretical and empirical studies that explore social, economic, and cultural trends related to digital technologies and the Internet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To be effective, the battle against COVID-19 and other pandemics must address the social dimensions of the crisis. The objective of this study was to assess whether negative attitudes toward elite knowledge were associated with vaccine hesitancy in the United States during COVID-19. Attitudes toward elite knowledge were assessed using three measures: (a) the Epistemological Style Inventory's 'naive realism' subscale, (b) a measure about supporting education to foster understanding of politics, and (c) a populism scale. Vaccine hesitancy was measured using a 9-item adaptation of the Vaccine Hesitancy Scale used by the World Health Organization. Multiple regression results revealed that naïve realism (.184, p <.001) and populism (.356, p <.001) were positively associated with vaccine hesitancy, while support of political education (−.296, p <.001) was negatively associated with vaccine hesitancy. These results indicate that to fully understand vaccine hesitancy, the role of attitudes toward elite knowledge must be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

George Steinmetz's book, "The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought: French Sociology and the Overseas Empire," explores the development of social-scientific thinking about empire, imperialism, and colonized peoples. Steinmetz applies a neo-Bourdieusian historical sociology of science, building on Pierre Bourdieu's ideas while incorporating a broader range of contextual factors. This departure from Bourdieu's theory allows Steinmetz to analyze the historical development of French colonial sociology and its relationship to external factors. Steinmetz's book offers a unique and innovative perspective on the sociology of knowledge and provides valuable insights into the complex interplay between fields and contexts in knowledge production. [Extracted from the article]

This paper re‐examines a key feature of Emile Durkheim's sociology of knowledge from a critical realist perspective. It is argued that Durkheim's attempt to establish a social basis for the categories in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life should be understood along ontological rather than epistemological lines. This brings to light new problems with the argument which, however, can be brought fruitfully into contact with the more recent social psychological literature on collective intentionality. This yields insights into future lines of inquiry into social cognition and theories of human conceptualizing capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of International Relations (IR) is being spun around by a seemingly endless number of 'turns'. Existing analyses of turning are few in number and predominantly concerned with the most prominent recent turns. By excavating the forgotten history of IR's earliest turns from the 1980s and tracing the evolution of turn-talk over time, this article reveals a crucial yet overlooked internalist driver behind the phenomenon: the rise of reflexivity. Rather than emerging in the 21st century, turn-talk began at the end of the 1980s as a series of turns away from positivism and towards reflexivity. Cumulatively, this first wave of turns would denaturalise IR's state-centric ontology while enshrining reflexivity as a canonical good among critical scholars. By the mid-1990s, however, these metatheoretical critiques of positivism had produced a substantial backlash. Charged with fostering an esoteric deconstructivism, a new generation of reflexivists set out to demonstrate the feasibility of post-positivist empirical research. As a result, IR's turning also took on a different form from the 2000s: whereas the first wave of turns had mounted an epistemological and methodological attack against the positivist mainstream, the second wave set about bringing new ontological objects under the scrutiny of reflexivist scholars. This shift from anti-positivist to mostly intra-reflexivist turning was facilitated by the institutionalisation of critical IR as a major subfield of the discipline. It is the privileged position of reflexivity among critical IR scholars that is the condition of possibility for endless turning, accentuated by mounting pressures to demonstrate novelty in an increasingly competitive environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking our lead from Karl Mannheim's sociology of knowledge theory, and utilizing qualitative content analyses of data extracted from editorials, articles, and public-facing documents, this current editorial details the story of how the myriad of editors for the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) safeguarded a space to highlight ideas essential to research of preservice and inservice teacher education within an ever-changing global context for nearly 75 years. Fourteen JTE editorships over four eras— competency, reformation, legitimization, and resilience —are laid bare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a personal reflection by Leslie Sklair on his relationship with Bridget, a fellow student and scholar. Sklair describes their time together at university, their separate academic paths, and their continued friendship over the years. He praises Bridget's intellectual contributions, particularly her work on Pierre Bourdieu and Thomas Piketty, and highlights her qualities as a radical, progressive, generous, and fair-minded scholar. Sklair expresses a desire to meet with Bridget again and engage in lively discussions while watching their granddaughters play in the park. [Extracted from the article]

The research field of nonprofits and philanthropy has grown exponentially. To what extent do nonprofit scholars share a common language? Answering this question is crucial to assessing the field's intellectual cohesiveness. We studied how coauthor networks, scholarly reputation, and the prevalence of female authors influence consensus formation. We found that the degree of consensus for all major research topics in the field has increased over time—For every 10% growth in the volume of literature, shared language increased by 1.4%. A cohesive research community on nonprofits and philanthropy has been forming since the early 2000s. Female scholars are fewer in number and less cited than males; their presence did not exceed 40% for most topics. The citation counts of scholars and small-world property of networks are positively associated with consensus, suggesting that star researchers and knowledge brokers bridging different intellectual communities are key to sharing research interests and language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have argued that anti-racialist ideologies – which deem racial categorization dangerous and racist – are an obstacle to antiracism, because they make race and its effects invisible, and obscure institutional and structural racism. This paper reexamines this argument empirically, by analyzing how activists resist "racial ignorance" and produce knowledge about race in anti-racialist contexts. Drawing on race scholarship, social movement theory, and sociology of knowledge, I ask: How do social movements produce knowledge about the role of race in policing in France? What are the implications of different epistemic practices for activists' racial conceptualizations and political practice? The article is based on an ethnography of three mobilizations contesting policing in France. The comparative methodology reveals that epistemic practices play a role in shaping how mobilizations reach a shared understanding of race and racism. Specifically, how knowledge projects determine racial difference, the methodologies used to capture racial inequality/oppression, and the level of analysis, all matter for the understanding of racism that activists are able to substantiate. Mobilization's epistemic approaches provide some activists with additional resources to promote their preferred racial conceptualizations and can produce the evidence needed to change the mobilization's dominant discourse, from individualistic to structural and systemic conceptualizations of racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European tradition makes a sharp distinction between animism and science. On the basis of this distinction, either animism is reproved for failing to reach the heights of science, or science is reproved for failing to reach the heights of animism. In this essay, I draw on work in the history and philosophy and science, combined with a method from the sociology of scientific knowledge, to question the sharpness of this distinction. Along the way, I also take guidance from the research of North American Indigenous scholars. As it turns out, there is a rich, if largely overlooked, tradition of Aristotelian animism running through the history of modern European science, and this tradition sometimes resonates with Indigenous perspectives. By challenging the entrenched distinction between animism and science, I aim to help reconcile ongoing tensions between Indigenous and European scientific groups, and so strengthen prospects for their mutually beneficial cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens at the point of interchange between scholarly communities? We examine this question by investigating the case of growing ties between historical sociology and ethnography, two social scientific methods that once seemed to have little in common. Drawing on methodological writings by ethnographers and original interviews with practicing historical sociologists, we argue that these ties have been shaped by structural and methodological homologies between the two disciplines. Structurally, ethnography and historical sociology are similarly positioned in sociology more broadly, as enterprises with sometimes-tense relationships with dominant assumptions of the social sciences. Methodologically, both ethnographers and historical sociologists face the challenges of bounding the research process, navigating access to data, analyzing and retaining data while "in the field," and overcoming cultural distance between themselves and the worlds they are studying. Taken together, these findings extend work in the sociology of science and knowledge and suggest some key conditions for intellectual efflorescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most recent academic studies of homophily--the tendency of people to interact with similar others--lean to a sociological critique of digital technologies, rather than revealing fundamentally positive outcomes. A few solid philosophical endeavors have emerged from the fields of philosophy of technology and enactive ethics. This article adopts a sociological perspective to argue that digital social networks can serve as an ethical infrastructure for facilitating effective communication. However, they also face the challenge of organizing the myriad of individual voices present within them, so that the necessary moral conditions to mitigate homophily can be established. From this viewpoint, it is suggested homophily should be viewed not as an individual's right to expression but as a cultivated echo-moral cultured landscape. Homophily is not an input but an outcome. Homophily does not happen without evaluating reception. A voice without assessment lacks the ethical dimension. By applying the theory of the social construction of reality (Berger & Luckmann, 2008), homophily can be conceived as the contribution of significant others. Most importantly, effective communication can be attained when new secondary institutions organize the input of significant others into a meaningful generalized other (Mead, 2015). As a result, I propose that digital technologies allow for ameliorating the moral character of the individual by shifting how one looks at communication: from an individual's right to a voice into an ordered culture of voices, from preserving rights to serving rightly. This perspective could illuminate policymakers to establish right processes to avoid homophily and help individuals and organizations achieve effective means of communication and deliberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a review of a book titled "Public Art and Youth: A Dialogic Aesthetic Experience" written by Sandra Lucía Uribe Alvarado. The book is based on academic research that analyzes the appreciation of young people from the University of Colima and the National Institute for Adult Education on three public art sculptures in Colima and Villa de Álvarez. The author also examines the relationship between the academic background of young people and their evaluations of public art, as well as the social function that public art fulfills from the perspective of young people. The book offers a clear structure with an introduction, two theoretical and methodological sections, an analysis of the data, and conclusions. Additionally, it provides a theoretical-methodological category called "dialogic aesthetic experience" and contributes to the field of knowledge of sociology of art. [Extracted from the article]

This study's primary objective is to investigate why "globalized traditionalists" (i.e., intellectuals who are highly globalized but adopt a traditionalist stance) and "provincial globalizers" (i.e., intellectuals who are hardly globalized but adopt a globalizing stance) are prevalent in some non-Western intellectual fields. These two groups feature counterintuitive intellectual characteristics and defy current studies' findings on intellectual conflict. They have recurred in grand debates on Chinese culture since the 1920s; intellectual historians cannot explain them. This study's secondary objective is to introduce the "multiscalar field perspective" and showcase its utility for the global sociology of knowledge. This study's data were collected from primary documentary sources of the Cultural Fever debate, secondary studies, and in-depth interviews with participants of the debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the book "Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal," political journalist and novelist George Packer analyzes the current state of the United States, explaining the country's descent into chaos and fragmentation. Packer identifies four distinct groups with different national narratives: Free America, Smart America, Real America, and Just America. He argues for the need to address conflicts and create an Equal America through changes in economic structures, the social safety net, and the distribution of power and wealth. Packer's analysis offers a thought-provoking examination of the challenges facing the country and proposes solutions for recovery. [Extracted from the article]

Abstract The contemporary sociology of knowledge treats meso-level institutions of intellectual production as its primary investigative focus but seldom studies global intellectual inequalities. Decolonial and postcolonial studies of knowledge focus on global intellectual inequalities, but they seldom examine meso-level institutions. This study’s research objective is to help bridge the research gap that results from these two fields’ disconnection: meso-level processes of intellectual imperialism. It does so by analysing the disruption of intellectual lineage formation in non-Western contexts and theorising this disruption as a processual aspect of intellectual imperialism. It coins the shorthand term ‘juniority effects’ to describe these relational processes. It investigates data on the careers of the first two cohorts of prominent thinkers in Japan between the 1860s and the 1910s and in China between the 1880s and the 1920s. The data sources include a wide variety of primary historical materials and secondary studies. Based on illustrating how these thinkers experienced and confronted reputational disruptions, it illustrates that juniority effects existed and seriously obstructed local intellectual lineages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes from a sociology of knowledge perspective to the ongoing sociological debate about statistics produced by international organisations taking the Global Estimates of Forced Labour published by the International Labour Organization (ILO) as a case of international quantification. We ask: what stages of negotiation were involved in the transformation of a legal category into a statistical category of forced labour oriented towards political action? The analysis combines the historical reconstruction of the political and organisational processes behind the production of the estimates with the study of the measurement framework of forced labour. The qualitative case study is based on semi-structured expert interviews and ILO documents. Our results highlight the processes by which a legal category was made practicable for statistical work and thereby point to the specific arrangements and connections between law, statistics, and policy within international organisations. As we argue, the estimates have provided consistency to a fragile social construct that originated in the imperial context of the interwar period, and that was turned into a 'visible' social and global phenomenon of the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hans-Herbert Kögler offers an insightful analysis and a potent moral call to support the defence of Ukraine. This is a sensible moral position that I also share. However, I question Kögler's approach which overemphasises the ethical arguments alone. I argue that wars do not allow for moral absolutism of any kind and that the best one can do in the conditions of warfare is to endorse a version of contextual morality. Furthermore, I make a case for using the accumulated knowledge of historical sociology to understand the dynamics of war in Ukraine. Building on this knowledge one can advance a multipart argument that favours the continuous support for the defence of Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns about a "crisis of expertise" have been raised recently in both scholarship and public debate. This article asks why there is such a widespread perception that expertise is in crisis, and why this "crisis" has posed such a difficult puzzle for sociology to explain. It argues that what has been interpreted as a crisis is better understood as a transformation: the dissolution of a regime of expertise organized around practices of social integration, and its displacement by a new regime organized around practices of expulsion. This article introduces a new framework that envisages expertise as an historically constituted phenomenon, which is the outcome of relational networks (which I call alliances). It argues that this approach, in which expertise(s) are understood as the historically contingent outcome of alliances between knowledge producers, problems, and modes of intervention, can better account for recent shifts. It does this by enabling us to reinterpret what has been described as a general crisis of expertise as, instead, the observed effects of the dissolution of specific alliances of knowledge and practice. This article demonstrates the power of this relational approach through two case studies: the dissolution of the expert alliances organized around the rehabilitative approach to crime and the counterinsurgency approach to irregular political violence. In each these cases, it finds that, as alliances of social expertise, characterized by policies and interventions that attempted to discipline problem actors and integrate them into society, unraveled, they were displaced by new alliances that sought to manage problems through practices of exclusion. The paper concludes with a theory of why the field of sociology has had such difficulty explaining the crisis of expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three official compilations of Buddhist encyclopedias were undertaken in China between the 1950s and 2000s. A sociological examination of these compilations reveals notable characteristics of the Buddhist knowledge system. Firstly, the production of knowledge manifests distinct regional attributes; it is not a process of standardization or objectification, but reflects local idiosyncrasies determined by its place of origination. Secondly, the majority of modern encyclopedia compilations are integral to the construction of national knowledge systems; hence, a nation's ideological tendencies profoundly influence the articulation of knowledge. Lastly, knowledge is transferred through two mediums: texts and people. Given the immutability of classical knowledge and the consistency of knowledge producers during this period, the results of the three compilations exhibit numerous commonalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, various forms of activism have contributed to unveiling long-silenced histories and remembering some almost forgotten stories of struggle, giving visibility to other memories of the "nation". In this text, after briefly revisiting various studies on social representations of history, we reflect on some challenges based on findings from an ongoing interdisciplinary research program on decolonial activisms in the Portuguese public sphere. Mnemonic activisms challenge us to think about the histories that structure public memory, its uses and abuses, as well as its interconnections with power relations, both inside and outside the nation, in a context where the challenges facing our lives clearly go beyond national borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Futures past, historically open when they were our present, are often recast as pre-determined after dramatic events. The war in Ukraine displays this pattern, and makes the book by Forsberg and Patomäki so welcome. It allows nuanced discussions of counterfactuals and causal complexes when the political climate favors reductionist, deterministic interpretations of who and what caused the war and what this implies for future possibilities. The book's dialogue format facilitates balanced analysis and its structure aroundtime phases adds complexity. Prevailing excessive learnings produce powerful policy guidance on false premises. However, the book underestimates the political forces involved in the writing of history treating public knowledge as an intellectual investigation writ large. Excessive mislearnings from the past follow not primarily from cognitive limitations distributed evenly – they are shaped by political struggles and a dominant folk conception of the nature of international relations. Enriching the analysis with a political sociology of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the connection between natural and social sciences through how the modern evolutionary synthesis approach, which emerged in biology, influenced social organizations. First, the paper examines the relationship of neo-evolutionism with organizational theories. Then the interaction between natural and social sciences is explained in the study. Afterwards, the relationship between neo-evolutionism and organization theory is handled around the discussions in this field. It has been emphasized that the flow of knowledge between sociology and biology is much more organic and mutual than expected. In other words, this study aims to draw attention to the methodological continuity of the interaction between evolution and organization theory from the very beginning to the present. In line with this purpose, the relationship between the transformation of the theory of evolution and the transformation of classical organizational theories is examined. In this study, it is claimed that the source of the paradigmatic interaction of neo-evolutionism and organization theories is the analogical relationship that began to be established between biology and sociology in the nineteenth century and that this relationship has turned into a much more organic structure than a mechanical and technical analogy in the historical process. This article is part of the theme issue 'Thermodynamics 2.0: Bridging the natural and social sciences (Part 2)'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that throughout his long and brilliant career Trevor Pinch was a leading scholar in at least three research fields. In the sociology of scientific knowledge he was one of the most influential contributors, both alone and in collaboration with his mentor Harry Collins (see in particular Collins and Pinch, 1982; and Pinch 1985, 1986). He co-founded and developed the sociology of technology and the field of science and technology studies for which, in 2018, he was awarded the prestigious John Desmond Bernal Prize by the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S). Later in his career, he was a core player in the field of sound studies (see for example Pinch and Bijsterveld (eds), 2003, 2004, 2012), to which he was led by his work on the Moog synthesizer (Pinch and Trocco, 2002) and his passionate love for music. However, the work of Trevor Pinch, and in particular the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) approach that he developed with Wiebe Bijker (Pinch and Bijker, 1984), has also been influential for many other neighbouring research fields to which he contributed only indirectly or episodically. This is the case for organisational studies, for example, or for studies of innovation. It is also the case for media studies. In what follows, as a media scholar, I represent the intellectual debt of my field to the work of Trevor Pinch. To do so, I will first clarify the role played by SCOT in the disciplinary tradition of media studies, in particular in the 1990s and at the beginning of the new century. I will then move my focus to lesserknown works by Trevor Pinch on mediated communication, which he sporadically addressed as part of his broader research interests (related, for example, to the practice of selling). My attempt will be to retrace the tenets of Pinch's own take on media as they emerge both from these too rare interventions and from the methodological reflection he has dedicated to the topic. In my final remarks, I will draw on the two preceding sections to highlight some other possible points of crosspollination between the current field of media studies and Trevor Pinch's work, that remain to be explored in depth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fundmental to Collins' theory of "the sociology of mind" worked up in I The Sociology of Philosophies i is an account of networked intellectual activity as a form of ritualized interactions in which "symbols are generated and are felt to be morally and cognitively binding" (Collins [6], 20). Regarding the latter, to be noted is the monumental work by sociologist Randall Collins, I The Sociology of Philosophies i : I A Global Theory of Intellectual Change i (Collins [6]), and other writings by him devoted to explorations of Philosophy (Collins, Reflexivity and Social Embeddedness in the History of Ethical Philosophies [10]). A more focused study by Collins is especially pertinent to preparing a way toward a context within which to situate a critical appreciation of Boxill's contributions to explorations of social justice, namely, his (Collins') sociological examination of histories of ethical philosophies (Collins, Reflexivity and Social Embeddedness in the History of Ethical Philosophies [10]). Keywords: Blacks and social justice; ethics; political philosophy; social philosophy; sociology of knowledge; sociology of philosophy EN Blacks and social justice ethics political philosophy social philosophy sociology of knowledge sociology of philosophy 333 349 17 09/21/23 20230901 NES 230901 "PHILOSOPHY": FROM IDEAL TO IDEOLOGY It has long been argued by many philosophers that "philosophy" I proper i is constituted only by logical relations among statements in views articulated as arguments, and that the success, or failure, of the arguments is, or should be, determined only by the success, or failure, in abiding by established norms of logical relations in reasoning in forming and articulating arguments, by nothing more. [Extracted from the article]

In this article, we consider how biographical research can avoid common pitfalls such as viewing social phenomena as ahistorical, focusing on single individuals (as if they exist in isolation), neglecting power inequalities and power balances, or ignoring collective discourses and their impact on the groupings or individuals concerned. When conducting biographical research, we are constantly at risk of falling into these traps, despite all our good intentions. To meet this challenge, we suggest an approach that combines social-constructivist biographical research with the principles of figurational sociology. This makes it possible to investigate the mutual constitution of individuals and societies, interdependencies between different groupings or we-groups (and different kinds of we-groups), and the changing power inequalities or power balances between and inside them, within different figurations in varying historical, 'social', and geographical contexts. To illustrate this methodological approach, we present examples from our joint field research on local post-war and peace processes, carried out in two adjacent regions of northern Uganda. This research focuses on the situation following the return to civilian life of former rebel fighters from different sociopolitical, ethnopolitical, or regional settings or groupings, and from different rebel groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Island Fantasia: Imagining Subjects on the Military Frontline between China and Taiwan" by Lin Wei-Pin is a book that explores the experiences of the people of Matsu, an island group between China and Taiwan. The book focuses on the concept of "imagining subjects" and analyzes various ethnographic stories within the context of contemporary anthropology. It covers the history of Matsu, the impact of war on the local society, the role of new media technologies, and the development of local subjects. The book provides a comprehensive ethnographic account of how ordinary people navigate and create new imaginations in the political, economic, and public domains. It emphasizes the complexity and diversity of contemporary society and the need for further investigation and analysis of generational differences within local social imagination. [Extracted from the article]

Mary Somerville (1780-1872) and William Whewell (1794-1866) both contributed to the disciplinary formation of the sciences in Great Britain in the nineteenth century: she as a synthesizer who connected the various branches of knowledge in the emerging physical sciences, and he as the first person who used the history of all branches of science to define what distinguished scientific knowledge from other kinds. Both published bodies of scholarly work whose volume and breadth astounded their contemporaries and seem almost unimaginable today. Neither is included in standard histories of science because neither made the kind of original discovery around which those histories are organized. They become much easier to comprehend in the context of polymathy, which recognizes discerning and illuminating coherence in large bodies of knowledge as an exceptional but essential creative act. Their writings reveal the adeptness of the polymathic mind in framing large bodies of knowledge through two rhetorical moves: (1) association, which connects the subject with commonly held assumptions and values and draws on aesthetic traditions that have emotional resonance; and (2) orientation, which provides organizing ideas and conceptual frameworks that establish the coherence of the subject matter and guide the reader through the text. The distinctively anti-disciplinary approach of Somerville and the fluid nature of the disciplinary categories Whewell used to organize his history suggest that the world of knowledge, including science, has never been divided into the territorial disciplinary structures that dominate higher education. Like polymaths collectively, Somerville and Whewell are apparent anomalies whose very existence challenges our notions about the role and value of specialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The religion–politics nexus has become a thriving field within the study of global politics. However, the fast development has translated only into a moderate diversification of the research. Building on Bourdieu's analysis of the social field, this paper argues that this limited pluralization is related to the strong heteronomy of the field. This heteronomy has three "concentric" sources—the dependence on the field of politics, the continued influence of the secularist bias of Western social science, and the dependence on the theoretical developments in the broader discipline of international relations. Methodologically, the article builds on a detailed analysis of eighteen top academic journals and their scholarly output related to religion in global politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]