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This paper reflects on the origins and subsequent reception of the paper "Ontological Gerrymandering: The anatomy of social problems explanations", published in 1985. It describes the circumstances of my turning up at McGill University as a Visiting Professor in Sociology and meeting Dorothy, then a graduate student and the TA assigned to an undergraduate course on Social Problems which I was asked to teach. The paper reflects on the twin benefits: of an interloper, from Europe and from Science and Technology Studies (STS), entering the exotic and heady fray of North American social problems; and of Dorothy's steady and resolute guidance in introducing me to a new field. The paper suggests some reasons for the endurance of the paper's arguments, more than 35 years after its publication, drawing on some parallel developments in Social Problems and STS. It asks why has there been rather little mutual interaction between these disciplines, given their common concern with questions, among others, about values, effects and interventions in academic scholarship. The paper concludes that many more of us might have done well to pursue the path of strident agnosticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both within and outside of sociology, there are conversations about methods to reduce error and improve research quality—one such method is preregistration and its counterpart, registered reports. Preregistration is the process of detailing research questions, variables, analysis plans, etc. before conducting research. Registered reports take this one step further, with a paper being reviewed on the merit of these plans, not its findings. In this manuscript, I detail preregistration's and registered reports' strengths and weaknesses for improving the quality of sociological research. I conclude by considering the implications of a structural-level adoption of preregistration and registered reports. Importantly, I do not recommend that all sociologists use preregistration and registered reports for all studies. Rather, I discuss the potential benefits and genuine limitations of preregistration and registered reports for the individual sociologist and the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the idea of sociological film that encourages sociological imagination, which refers to the capability to recognize the intersection of biography and history. The paper identifies six key dimensions of sociological film through a thematic analysis of different classic approaches to sociological imagination: sociological life, structure-actors relationship, critical perspective, academic awareness, fluidity of meaning, and promotion of sociological imagination. This paper provides concrete examples to demonstrate the distinctive features of sociological film and how it relates to, and differs from, other films that address social issues, including documentary films. The paper argues that sociological film is essential in fostering sociological imagination by offering a unique lens for analyzing and understanding social phenomena. Sociological film has the potential to inspire social change by increasing awareness about significant social issues and promoting critical thinking and reflection. The paper concludes by emphasizing the significance of collaboration between sociologists and filmmakers in advancing sociological imagination through the medium of sociological films. It highlights the importance of actively engaging with the public in visual research methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Israel leads the worldwide record of living non-directed kidney donations: People who volunteer to donate one of their kidneys to people they do not know. This paper explores this phenomenon by localizing the theoretical question of the tension between altruism and solidarity in the actual structure of Israeli society. Specifically, the paper introduces the work of Matnat Chaim, a non-profit organization of matching donors with renal patients in need of a transplantation. This organization allows its volunteers to select their recipient's background and indeed almost all donations are directed to Jewish patients. The paper enters the ethical discussion regarding this practice, by presenting the stories of the donors themselves and their donation justifications. This paper portrays a nuanced understanding of the connections between altruism and solidarity which digresses from liberal interpretations of these concepts. I concludes by pointing to the dialectics of altruism and solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rejoinder to the papers on A Joyfully Serious Man. The Life of Robert Bellah (AJSM) written by Andrew Abbott, Federico Brandmayr, Charles Camic, Andrea Cossu, Jean-Louis Fabiani, Laura Ford, Harlan Stelmach, and Rhys Williams. Conceived as an exercise in self-reflection, the paper addresses five wide areas: specific critiques of AJSM; an assessment of the relationship between AJSM and the research project whence it came; the connections between author and critics; a clarification of some fact regarding the main character of AJSM, that is, Robert Bellah; and the analysis of particular experiences which the author, Bellah, and his critics share as sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contribution is based on Robert Bellah's introduction to Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society (1973) and second on other references to the French sociologist in Bellah's work as well as in Bortolini's insightful remarks on the "homology" between Durkheim and Bellah. The publication of the book took place in a time of Durkheimian effervescence: Steven Lukes' Emile Durkheim.His Life and Work was published on the same year and a new Durkheimology appeared in the English-speaking world: attention shifted from methodology, as expressed in Suicide or in the Rules of Sociological Method, to morality with a focus on the moral basis on a non-pathological society. Bellah's statement is quite strong: Durkheim can "be seen as a theologian of French civil religion". The paper will examine's this point of view with respect to the state of French society at the turn of the century and Durkheim's social project. One side question concerns the choice of texts: the editor did not give enough weight to texts that might have strengthen Bellah's point of view, particularly l'Education morale. Bortolini mentions Bob's long and silent work on Durkheim and his critique of mainstream analysis of The Elementary forms of Religious Life, reducing religion to a mere projection of society (:142). The biographer insists on the ambivalent, if not contradictory, vision of Durkheim in Bellah's work, in which he finds a key to the interpretation of the oeuvre. The article focuses on how to account for its complexity, which is never as clear as in the interpretation of Durkheim's sociology in a post-rationalist direction. Bortolini's concept of role model/hero incarnated by the founding fathers (here Weber and Durkheim) is analyzed in connection with Parsons' reconstitution of a pantheon. The question of civil religion is reexamined in the light of the transatlantic transfers carrying different meanings of civil religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on sociologists conceptualizing and studying hope along with several other papers on diverse topics. Topics include refection on the state of historical consciousness in U.S. sociology, and a discussion of the recent trend toward the pre-registration and registration of research designs; and study of "social pathology" such as poverty, illness, racial/ethnic discrimination.

Among the founders of sociology, it was Georg Simmel who provided the most thorough analysis and theory of space. This paper aims to reconstruct Simmel's spatial theory and his observations of spatial relations. The German sociologist engaged with spatiality in a threefold way. First, he tried to provide a systematic social theory of space; second, analyzing spatial relations was important for his diagnosis of modernity; third, he dealt with the subjective constitutions of space in his shorter, essayistic writings. This paper argues that the importance of the third strand for a sociological understanding of space has seldom been recognized in sociology. In addition, it also shows that despite the diversity in perspectives, there is an underlying coherence to Simmel's theory of space. As a result, it becomes evident that Simmel was not only ground-breaking in conceptualizing space from a sociological point of view, but that his theory of space continues to be inspirational and relevant to this day for interpreting the entanglement of social and spatial relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are contemporary researchers "present" in investigating the past, and how do they conduct research that acknowledges the reconstruction of the past without reducing it to what they already wanted to find? These perennial questions have become central to literature at the intersection of historical hermeneutics and sociological methodology. This paper provides a novel perspective on these questions by interrogating the notion of "anachronism" with the help of queer historiography and pragmatism. Queer historiographers make a case for how the present is experienced as multiple temporalities, how the sense of anachronism is dependent on dynamics of bodily identification with historical others, and how this sense may become a provocative hermeneutic strategy rather than a topic to be avoided. Pragmatists show how anachronism emerges as the socially-situated and embodied sense of surprise in encountering particular traces of the past in the actor's present, and how this surprise may prompt analyses into the past that utilize the researcher's value-commitments as a resource in sociological inquiry. The paper seeks to build conceptual tools for a pragmatic hermeneutics that can strengthen both the accuracy of our investigations into particular historical events and our democratically-inclusive ethical and political projects to reconstruct usable histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2000, a controversial article about hormones and gender roles was published to stimulate debate about whether and how biological knowledge should be integrated in sociological research. Two decades later, this so-called biosociology debate is more relevant than ever, as biological knowledge has become widespread across societies and scientific disciplines. Hence, we as sociologists are regularly confronted with biological explanations that challenge our own explanations. Whether this happens in the scientific arena, the classroom, media, or even at social events, these situations often force us, individually, to take a stance on whether to meet such explanations with dialogue or opposition. One could therefore expect that sociologists have an interest in discussing these issues with their peers, but their lack of participation in the biosociology debate suggests otherwise. This paper explores possible reasons for this absence and how sociologists' views on biosociology are influenced by key agents – sociological associations and journals. Smith's "A Sacred project of American Sociology", and Scott's "A Sociology of Nothing" served as theoretical tools in the paper. A qualitative content analysis of presidential addresses of four sociological associations was conducted. The analyses suggest that sociologist avoid biosociology for widely different reasons, including fear that biosociology legitimizes oppression. This avoidance is probably reinforced by the leftish politization of the sociological discipline and the rightish politization of society. Overcoming obstacles to engagement in biosociology is required to safeguard the scientific integrity of sociology and enable sociologists to provide relevant contributions to research on the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to uncover the modes of justification by which sociological theorists legitimize the "canon" of sociological theory in practice, through the stories they tell to students in sociological theory textbooks. Specifically, we ask: how do textbook authors rationalize their decisions to include and exclude some theorists? Further, what are the modes or "rules of the conceptual game" underlying these justifications? To address these questions, we undertake a rhetorical examination of a corpus of 250 English-language editions of sociological theory textbooks. Focusing on their Introductions and Conclusions, we highlight texts that presume the canon is a social fact and investigate the justifications they provide for assenting to this fact. We articulate and illustrate three forms of legitimation: functionalist, historicist, and humanist. Functionalist justifications legitimate the canon by appealing to its capacity to generate disciplinary unity and integrity. Historicist justifications legitimate the canon by appealing to its members' foundational and influential role in defining the direction of the field. Humanist justifications legitimate the canon through appealing to the intrinsic qualities of its texts and authors. Identifying these pathways is the primary empirical contribution of this paper, which in turn contributes to the collective project of disciplinary self-reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experts, Social Scientists, and Techniques of Prognosis in Cold War America convincingly demonstrates the importance of RAND's Delphi method and political gaming as techniques of prognosis that were central to the construction of Cold War futures expertise. The book begins from the premise that although expertise in various forms of prognosis, prediction, and forecasting predated the creation of RAND, different modes of interaction among experts at RAND defined a new form of future-oriented expertise during the Cold War. This visual essay will use this premise as an entry point into other, earlier historical examples of interaction, albeit in different forms, that also produced expert knowledge about the future: 1.) nineteenth-century meteorological knowledge infrastructures and what Aitor Anduaga has described as "epistemic networks," 2.) agricultural statistics and cooperative bureaucracy, and 3.) early twentieth-century business forecasting and what Seth Rockman has identified as the "paper technologies of capitalism." This visual essay examines three images that illuminate earlier historical examples of expert interaction in predictive knowledge infrastructures in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States. The essay employs historian Paul Edwards's definition of knowledge infrastructures as "robust networks of people, artifacts, and institutions that generate, share, and maintain specific knowledge about the human and natural worlds." An infrastructural framework, as Edwards observes, shifts away from "thinking about knowledge as pure facts, theories, and ideas" and instead "views knowledge as an enduring, widely shared sociotechnical system." The visual essay format makes visible the material components of a knowledge infrastructure as well as its symbolic meanings, and it also reminds us to ask what is not pictured and why. This essay focuses on how these knowledge infrastructures have combined data, information, judgment, and opinion to produce expert knowledge about the future, and it asks us to consider how future-oriented expertise has emerged historically and who counts as an expert. It will explore three main questions: How has interaction among experts historically taken place at a distance and in person? How did knowledge infrastructures, bureaucracies, and paperwork shape the production of expert knowledge about the future before the Cold War? How has expert foreknowledge historically relied on various forms of "futurework" as labor? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction serves to set the stage for a special issue of The American Sociologist, a festschrift in honour of the career and ongoing influence of Dorothy Pawluch. A festschrift is a collection of reflections in honor of a scholar, and this issue includes reflections of how Dorothy Pawluch came to inspire, through her teaching and supervisory guidance, a particular legacy that continues to inform her former students, their own students, and the wider academic community. The festschrift also includes papers which have the goal of advancing social problems theory and taking constructionism in new, exciting directions. As such, they are also geared to honor Dorothy's career. While readers will no doubt be reminded by many of the contributors about the huge impact of Dorothy's influential article, Ontological Gerrymandering, written with Stephen Woolgar, what also shines through are recollections of Dorothy's kindness, altruism, and general decency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following reflections by Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann, this paper is concerned with the changing meaning of the profession as a sociological category for analyzing modern society. Professions are practical academic occupational groups oriented to certain social values, to which a special significance for society was attributed in the social sciences for a long time, thus marking a connection between professions' research and theory of society. This paper now describes that the causal relationship between profession and society is limited to a historically relatively early period. In the transition to modern society, this close network of relationships begins to dissolve, and now professions operate in the context of some function systems of society whose task is the professional assistance of single clients, such as in the fields of health, law, and pastoral care. However, the professions' highlighted position in the knowledge and action structure of single function systems seems to dissolve more and more today so that one can ask whether we can speak here already of an end of the social form profession. This would correspond with the observation that actually the professions no longer appear at all in the newer theories of society and therefore their function as an important mechanism of social structure formation is no longer attributed to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this autoethnographic essay, I reflect on my experience of meeting Dorothy and working with her during my graduate studies at McMaster University. Drawing on the concepts of "otherness" and "belonging," I reflect on the role Dorothy played in introducing me to the social constructionism and to the dynamic of relationship between graduate students in their mentors. Following my own professional transitions, I structure the paper as a set of personal diary entries that are focused on my conversation with Dorothy as my course instructor and my mentor post-graduation. In these entries, my thoughts or ideas are presented as "responses" to the questions, ideas, and discussions posed or initiated by Dorothy. The last reflection considers how Dorothy's role as my mentor shaped my own experiences of mentoring students and became pivotal in my academic and personal development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this article is to provide some guidance and inspiration for the teaching of the classics in sociology by taking a close look at the way in which Robert K. Merton taught this topic at Columbia University. The course was entitled "History of Sociological Theory (Sociology 150)" and was given between 1958 and 1968. With the help of archival material, the article reconstructs what Merton said during his lectures, which texts he assigned, what kind of tests he gave, and what type of paper the students should write. Merton did not want the students to only study the texts of the classics but also try to figure out how these went about their research and were able to formulate their theories. This meant that he emphasized how the classics approached such activities as problem-finding, problem-solving and looking for strategic research sites. In the concluding section, the broad approach to theory in Merton's teaching is contrasted to the more narrow one he presented in Social Theory and Social Structure. Positive and negative aspects of Merton's approach to the classics are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I will try to consider the usual allegations of determinism that are directed towards Bourdieu's notion of habitus from a slightly different perspective. One of the most common arguments found in these types of charges is that Bourdieu unsuccessfully attempted to reconcile objective and subjective aspects of social life under one notion. According to critics, habitus is not a viable solution to structure vs. agency debate simply because it cannot be both determined by social structure and open to contingency of autonomous subjective interpretations of the social world. I will show that this critique of Bourdieu actually is inspired by incompatibilist philosophy which maintains that regarding human action either determinism or free will can be true. However, those sociologists who, in criticising Bourdieu's understanding of habitus, follow the incompatibilist line of reasoning usually overlook the compatibilist side of this old debate in moral philosophy. In that regard, I will argue that Frankfurt and Taylor's compatibilist account of second order desires and strong evaluations can help us to better understand how habitus can be determined by environmental social factors and, at the same, time not only foster free will, but also provide a theoretical insight into radical forms of social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The societal changes of the last century, especially in the aftermath of World War II, have led thinkers to imagine philosophical anthropology centred on the concept of hope. From very different perspectives, authors such as Ernst Bloch, Erich Fromm, and Hannah Arendt understood that hope is deeply connected with the condition and destiny of humanity. Various sociologists have developed concepts closely linked with hope: action, social change, utopia, revolution, emancipation, innovation, and trust. However, a coherent and systematic analysis is yet to emerge. Taking up the threads of this rich but fragmented reflection, this paper intends to outline the traits of a "sociology of hope" as a tool for critically interpreting today's society and the processes of change crisscrossing it, starting from some crucial questions: Who are the actors and historical bearers of hope? What are the main socio-historical forms of hope? What social, political, and cultural conditions favour the emergence and strengthening of this disposition? What are the effects and consequences on personal and social life? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personal responsibility has emerged as an important element in many countries' public health planning, and has attracted substantial debate in public health discourse. Contemporary medical sociology typically resists such "responsibilization" as victim-blaming, by privileged elites, that obscures important structural factors and inequities. This paper, based primarily on a broad review of how contemporary Anglophone medical sociology literatures treat responsibility and blame, points out advantages of taking responsibility seriously, particularly from the individual's perspective. These advantages include: empowerment; responsibility-as-coping-mechanism; moral dignity; and the pragmatic logic of doing for oneself, rather than passively awaiting societal reforms. We also offer possible reasons why sociologists and their subjects view these issues so differently, and suggest some areas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arab-Palestinian citizens are one of the most marginalized social groups in of Israel. It is therefore not surprising that a vast proportion of the sociological literature pertaining to this group focuses on mechanisms of oppression and/or alternative forms of political resistance. While undeniably important, this narrow focus has been blind to one of the most fundamental changes in Arab-Palestinian society: the steady emergence of an Arab-Palestinian middle class. The paper addresses this blind spot in the research literature. We present the previously untold story of this structural change by describing the historical processes and socio-political mechanisms that have led to this development. We focus on specific periods of time and show that in each period, the Arab middle class developed primarily by seizing opportunities paradoxically created by policies that were meant to marginalize Arab-Palestinians, identifying prospects unlocked by the free market, and pursuing higher education. We then present descriptive results indicating the rise of the Arab middle-class in the last three decades. In contrast to the pessimistic and often deterministic view of the conditions of Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, this article, which required the authors to free themselves of the limits imposed by critical sociology, paints a picture of agency and change. Theoretical and political implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article re-examines the social role of group boundaries in mixed families. While most studies depict, resonate, or even endorse a progressive vision of mixed families, characterized by the crossing, blurring, or challenging of group boundaries, this paper portrays a vision designated by the reinforcement, safeguarding, and tense management of group boundaries. This vision arises from the lived experience of religious educators who belong to a non-liberal group in Israeli society – the ultra-Orthodox Mizrahi community. As I will demonstrate, many Mizrahim in Israel (Jews originating from Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa) live in mixed families. Yet, these families are significantly unlike those often described in the literature. First, their mixedness is not conjugal; instead, it is forged through differences between parents and children, siblings, cousins, etc. Second, the dissimilarities between these family members are not ethnic, racial, national, religious, or class-based, but rather stem from differences in observance. By this, I refer to disparities in religious ways of life, stringency of observance, and openness to modernity of family members who belong to distant, sometimes even hostile, sub-groups in Jewish society in Israel: ultra-Orthodox, religious, traditionalists, and secular. I will show how ultra-Orthodox Mizrahim who live in mixed-observance families maintain their bonds with their non-ultra-Orthodox relatives by safeguarding the boundaries that separate them. Hence, the tolerant vision that arises from their experience invites reconsideration of how living together differently is possible in societies in which liberal and non-liberal groups share a joint political space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I consider the way the as yet unrealized peace between Israelis and Palestinians has been conceptualized by Western scholarship and also by the elite Israeli peace camp. Their approach to reconciliation is liberal, in that it is secular, individualistic, looks to human rights discourse for its sense of justice and for a model for citizenship. The liberal peace culture is laden with social norms, values, and ethical demands, many of which are not necessarily inherent to "peace", but rather related to the taken-for-granted liberal social expectations of the people who run these initiatives, and often of scholars who write about peace. By contrast, much of the Israeli and Palestinian population, are far more religious, culturally traditional and community oriented, experience a sacred connection to the land, and look to their religious traditions for their sense of justice and ideas about citizenship. They are, in other words, non-liberal subjects. These non-liberal groups are also beginning to re-envision peace through their own cultural, Middle Eastern, lens. Not only do liberal approaches differ from non-liberal ones, but they also misrepresent non-liberal approaches as both anachronistic and authoritarian. This misrecognition is not mal-intentioned, but its consequences are grave nonetheless. This paper suggests that in order for academia to make a substantial or meaningful contribution to the topics of peace and conflict resolution, it needs to do far more self-reflection on the ideological assumptions inherent in its current approach, so as not to reproduce Euro-centric models and concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a biographical sketch of the late Hans L. Zetterberg and a historical background to a translation of an essay based on a lecture given by Zetterberg in Stockholm in 1995. In it, he recounts his time at the Department of Sociology at Columbia University in the years 1953–1964. This essay is full of insights into an inspiring and formative period for Zetterberg in the United States, particularly in the stimulating milieu that was Columbia, at this time the center of American sociology led by Robert K. Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld. In the introduction to this translated essay, I give a brief overview of the establishment of sociology as a discipline in Sweden, and the transfer of knowledge between the United States and Sweden (and Europe, more broadly), embodied in Hans Zetterberg. In the post-WWII years, American sociology, which had a strong positivistic imprint, played an important role in shaping the beginnings of Swedish sociology. However, the transfer of knowledge went both ways, with Zetterberg, a semi-central and often neglected figure, being both a significant contributor to sociology at Columbia in its period of greatest prominence, and in his native Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assimilation of the theoretical and methodological constructions of Western sociology into the investigation of primarily reform oriented social research problems of twentieth century China, is the background to the work done by most of the pioneering Chinese sociologists such as Fei Xiaotong. The aim of this paper is to analyse the movement of ideas and research methods in the global circulation of knowledge and the formulation of distinct traditions of academic enquiry, in this case, Chinese sociology. This article uses the chronology of Fei's life to present the interactions between American (Robert Parks and the Chicago School), British (Malinowski and social anthropology of 1930s), Russian (Shirokogoroff) and Chinese (Wu Wenzao and Yenching school) sociological traditions and their influences in Fei's works, primarily his most famous work, From the Soil. Fei's indigenous concept of Chaxugeju, presents a clear distinction between Chinese and Western societies. In this article, we apply Chaxugeju in some of the fairly common social research questions on family structure, gender and state- society relations to bring out the nuanced distinctions in the American and Chinese theoretical traditions. We also look into the problems in Fei's theorising in the use of community studies, in tackling the colonialism aspect and with respect to the cultural context in Chinese sociology and its similarities in its challenges with Chicago school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In plotting the course for the discipline of sociology, sociologists over the past two decades have called for the practice of "public sociology" (Burawoy in American Sociological Review, 70(1), 4–28, 2005), for disciplinary convergence around a critical methodology (Carroll in Canadian Review of Sociology, 50(1), 1–26, 2013) and the devotion of our scholarly efforts to issues of social justice (Romero in American Sociological Review,85(1), 1–30, 2020). While public, critical, and social justice-oriented work is important, these disciplinary mandates can serve to marginalize other types of sociological work that are valuable as well. In this climate, work coming from perspectives that are not as left leaning politically, or that does not seek to advance any political agenda may be seen as less valued or legitimate, and scholars who choose to separate their political agendas from their research may experience marginalization (McLaughlin in Canadian Journal of Sociology, 30(1), 1–40, 2005; Pawluch in The American Sociologist,50, 204–219, 2019). Inspired by the work and doctoral mentorship of Dorothy Pawluch, this paper seeks to both understand the historical development of the field of Canadian sociology and consider the value and place of the interpretive tradition within it. Through reflecting on the research of others and my own experiences as a graduate student, I argue that the "chilly" climate Dorothy (Pawluch in The American Sociologist,50, 204–219, 2019) alludes to for scholars who operate outside of a politically informed "social-justice agenda" does exist, but that mentorship can help mediate this chill for interpretive leaning students. Finally, I suggest that the branch of the interpretive tradition which asks researchers to suspend their own perspectives and privilege the position of others still has value for Canadian sociology. It can both produce deep, meaningful research contributions and provide students with tools for engaging in productive intellectual debate and transformative encounters with difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Written for Dorothy Pawluch's festschrift for The American Sociologist, this paper seeks to advance constructionist conceptualization and theorizing of time. Our goal is to contribute to expanding the social constructionist toolkit by considering the role of temporality in social problems claims-making, i.e., temporal hermeneutics or time as a vernacular resource. We background this focus with a brief overview of sociological examinations of time, with a particular focus on the writings of George Herbert Mead, who developed key concepts that point to an underdeveloped sociology of time. We argue that 'hewing' to members own projections and invocations of time helps analysts to remain agnostic regarding the examination of definitional processes. Two case studies indicate potential directions forward. First is the case of the 'tank man' image/meme, originating from news coverage of the June 4, 1989 Chinese government crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square. Second, we explore the case of 'missing time' experienced by those claiming to have encountered aliens and unidentified flying objects (UFOs). These very different cases suggest the wide range of applications a hermeneutics of temporality may offer to constructionist scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the history of sociology in India to colonial anthropology and Indology. I argue that the compulsions of post-colonial society have also made specific demands on the discursive terrain of sociology. Fundamental to the pursuit of sociological knowledge in India, I believe, was a core debate about its mode of discursive practice – specifically, a debate between particularistic and universalistic orientations. From this point of view, I re-read the history of sociology in India. In doing so, I argue that close attention to the history of sociology helps us see the extent to which foundational western approaches to historical and comparative sociology have affected the historical development of sociology in India. Ironically, this has meant that the degree of historical self-awareness in Indian sociology has been limited. Hence, I discuss the grounds for the weak historical self-awareness in terms of historical sociology in India. I conclude by discussing how a strengthened tradition of historical sociology can be a tool to revitalize the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I celebrate the invaluable role Dorothy Pawluch played in my scholarly career and in my life as both role model and mentor. In doing so I discuss the embodied nature of these roles through which she transferred sociological knowledge, norms of the profession, and affective support to me, all of which make her an outstanding supervisor, dear friend, and a significant other of the highest order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American sociologist C. Wright Mills is one of the most important and controversial sociologists of the post-war period. Of Mills' works, one book stands out: The Sociological Imagination, published by Oxford University Press in 1959. Little known is that Mills drafted his book during a 12-month Fulbright visit to University of Copenhagen 1956-1957. In the rich biographical literature on Mills this is mentioned only in the passing, or not at all. Based on hitherto unused archival material, this paper offers the first detailed account of his Copenhagen-visit during the Cold War. Bringing together this bulk of new historical traces sheds new light on the year Mills himself referred to as a "pivotal moment." These 12 months in Copenhagen, amid the Cold War, was formative for Mills in two ways: First, Copenhagen was an entrepot to European center-left thinking both east and west of the Iron Curtain. Second, the stay in Copenhagen offered a 'space of selfhood', allowing Mills a necessary respite to develop his critical thinking. He did so in close cooperation with like-minded colleagues in Copenhagen. In the mid-1950s, the discipline was in the making in Denmark, and the visit of a prominent US scholar like Mills offered opportunities for Danish sociologist to further the discipline – and their standing within the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the tensions between ideals about sociology (and what it ought to be) transmitted during university socialization and the everyday working activities among Argentinean sociologists. It focuses on an extreme case: that of the graduates who, lacking the opportunity or the desire to join the professoriate, became market researchers. The case is extreme because while university training provided these individuals with a set of methodological and analytical skills that proved to be useful (and profitable) when studying consumers and markets, it also encouraged a critical, world-rejecting, view of the discipline which was at odds with their professional activities. Not surprisingly, they encountered a distressing moral puzzle: were they betraying sociology's progressive values, values to which they were seriously committed? Building on E. Hughes' concept of "dirty work", this paper examines how these individuals navigated an occupation that was, at least initially, seen as morally objectionable, and the ways by which they came to imbue it with new and edifying "sociological" value. This article is based on interviews with sociologists working in market research and a socio-historical account of the School of Sociology at the University of Buenos Aires, the nation's most important program, where all our interviewees were trained. This study has implications for understanding situations in which actual professional practices are in sharp contrast with the ideals presented during university socialization, and the identity repair processes that university-trained workers undertake when dealing with deviant careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, intellectuals are prone to substitute a scholastic relation to the social world for the practical relation people have to it: they replace the practical relation to objects by the relation an observer has to them and by their way of looking at them. When he/she replaces the active agent by the reflecting subject, and the logic of practice by a scholastic reason, the researcher doesn't realize that he/she performs an essential alteration of experience. The logic of practice can't be grasped from such a point of view. In order to seize it, Bourdieu said, we have to return to the world of everyday experience. But there are many ways for doing that. In this paper I examine two of them, through a comparison of two philosophers (Gadamer and Dewey) belonging to two different traditions (philosophical hermeneutics and pragmatism). Only Dewey seems to avoid what Bourdieu calls the "scholastic epistemocentrism". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a study of the International Space Station (ISS), this paper argues that – as a set of orientations for sociological inquiry – pragmatism and hermeneutics are confluent frameworks to examine valuation as a social process. This confluence is grounded on their common attunement to valuing as a problematic and relational process, their equally common updates with theories of institutions, and a further conceptual development regarding the temporalities of valuation. I advance the argument in four steps. First, looking at how the question about the "scientific value" of the ISS is far from settled, I show how valuation is always about something considered problematic and indeterminate. Second, characterizing the ISS at the intersection of different criteria of assessment, I stress the nature of valuation as a fundamentally perspectival and interpretive process, and show how a hermeneutic approach can complement some of the limitations of pragmatism in this regard. Third, I look at the question of institutions considering how some modes of assessment sediment more successfully than others. Fourth, I argue that, while providing insights towards it, pragmatist and hermeneutic approaches to valuation have not fully grasped its temporal nature as a process, and outline ways to open this line of inquiry. I conclude with some ideas for studies in sociology of science to re-entangle detailed case studies of scientific practice with the study of how institutions make claims of worth about the nature of science, I propose ways to extend these arguments to other studies of what I call iridescent institutions, and I make some considerations about our stance as sociologists in these valuation disputes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to point the way towards a new articulation between hermeneutics and pragmatism. The founders of pragmatism in large part ignored the hermeneutic tradition, while the founders of hermeneutics focused above all on the scholarly pursuit of textual interpretation. The textual paradigm is undeniably important; it enables us to understand, analogically, the way in which action appears to us as "meaningful" and "fixed" (Ricœur, Geertz, Alexander), but it is not sufficient for analyzing our ordinary activities in their situational context. Pragmatism reorients hermeneutics towards a stronger focus on problematic situations that call for interpretive effort. Pragmatism and hermeneutics together make it possible to rethink social theory by identifying different ways of understanding sociosigns from spontaneous understanding to the most reflective forms of understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically looks at the ways in which 'global sociology' has been debated and conceived in the past decades. It provides an historical overview of various proposals and ideas and the institutional contexts within which they are put forward and criticized. Two different periods are distinguished. Until the early twenty-first century, on the one hand, criticism of the 'ethnocentrism of the West' was often supported by ideas and pleas for an 'indigenization' of sociological knowledge. A commitment to the unity of science and to its universalist aspirations remained strong, however. In the course of the twenty-first century, on the other hand, criticism of the 'northern dominance' in sociology has become much stronger. Instead of a 'multicultural' understanding of global sociology, a 'critical' sociology that contributes to 'global justice' is now often advocated. Based on this historical overview, it is suggested that global sociology might contribute to more self-reflexivity within the discipline. It helps us to see how different contexts reverberate into the ways in which sociology itself is imagined in this world and provides an analysis of the debates for a better understanding of the challenges which sociology currently faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the influence of the Catholic Worker Movement on a small set of sociologists: Paul Hanley Furfey, Gladys Sellew, Mary Elizabeth Walsh, Gordon Zahn, Michael Harrington (actually a political scientist), and the author. Experience with the Worker moved these sociologists into addressing several interrelated social issues: capitalism, militarism, racism, poverty, and homelessness primary among them. It also led them to some rather unusual forms of activism, ranging from living in interracial houses in poor neighborhoods during the 1930's to civil disobedience. The article concludes with an argument for incorporating such forms of activism into sociological practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses the various topics within the issue, including Israeli sociology, ethnic identification, the sociology of peace, and responsibility in medical sociology.

An editorial is presented on the canons in the field of sociology, the contributions of forgotten or under-recognized scholars and activists, mutual influences across national and cultural boundaries. It highlights issues of methodology and the proper uses of methods by sociological researchers. An overview of particular conception of how canonization is problematic, in terms of representation is presented.

Climate change is increasingly recognized as not only a biophysical and technological problem but also a social one. Nonetheless, sociologists have expressed concern that sociology has paid relatively little attention to climate change. This deficit threatens to limit the frames available to understand and imagine solutions to the climate crisis. In this paper I report the most up-to-date and expansive empirical assessment of attention to climate change in sociology in the United States (U.S.). I find little to no mention of climate change across leading sociology journal articles (0.89%), conference sessions (1.5%), and faculty biographies (2.8%) and course listings (0.2%) in the 20 top-ranked departments in the U.S. Two leading journals, the American Sociological Review and American Journal of Sociology, have cumulatively published just three articles focused on climate change to date. This level of disciplinary attention appears low compared to the field’s engagement with other important social problems. My findings thus suggest that climate silence is persistent and pervasive in U.S. sociology. I discuss the implications of this silence and outline opportunities for sociologists, funders, journalists, and policymakers to embrace social science perspectives in climate change teaching, research, and policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The key feature of a knowledge formation is that it finds a way to finance the production of knowledge. We are accustomed to thinking of universities as the standard knowledge formation of modern science, social science, and the humanities. But this was not true before the twentieth century and is decreasingly true in the twenty-first. The RAND Corporation, which evolved from its military origins, was a model alternative to this model. As Dayé shows, RAND produced ideas that would never have been developed in the university: two "prospection" techniques, Delphi and Political Gaming. It also created careers outside the university for brilliant misfits who savored intellectual delights and relevance that the university would have crushed. How they produced knowledge matters: it gives us some ideas about what is possible for future knowledge formations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil and Bernardo Arévalo of Guatemala are PhD sociologists who served as presidents of their countries. Jože Pučnik of Slovenia, also a PhD sociologist, was a leading but defeated candidate in his country’s first post-communist presidential election. This paper explores the relationship between their sociological work and their political careers. Cardoso’s work was interdisciplinary and focused on historical conjunctures. He was very widely cited in scholarly publications. Pučnik was concerned with overcoming fundamentalist megaliths and uniting theory and practice. He had difficulty communicating the relationship between his sociology and his political leadership. Arévalo wrote a dissertation in the historical sociology of Guatemalan militarism, and also pursued an applied sociological career in conflict resolution. Sociological leadership may be enhanced by using middle-range theories tuned to current situations, especially at times of crisis, and by advocating timely and feasible solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociological study of political culture has made important headways. Scholars have demonstrated the significance of background culture, symbols and narratives as well as of the shared patterns of conduct. Yet, the relationship of those to ordinary people, how they become meaningful, has not been effectively explored. This paper argues that to comprehend this relationship we must understand political languages as concerning questions of being. I will show how the philosophical resources of Mead's pragmatism and Taylor's hermeneutics can enlighten the link between political languages and self, demonstrate its significance, and suggest ways in which the study of political cultures can be extended to integrate meaningful selfhood. Comparing and complementing pragmatism and hermeneutics, I will argue that political languages become meaningful along two intertwined dimensions: First, practical self-insertion in coordinative patterns, which involves the expression of concerns and senses of being. Second, self- and world clarification. Here, political languages become important when they articulate concerns and intuitions and bring moral sources into proximity. Moreover, by foregrounding Taylor's hermeneutics of self-expression and articulation, which is yet to be integrated in the social sciences, I will show how both dimensions are connected in an hermeneutical cycle and thus ought to be analysed in their relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charles Thorpe argues sociology lacks a "language of society as a whole." He holds that positivist sociologists de-legitimated holistic theories or broad normatively oriented "social theories," leaving the discipline without discursive means to critically assess and deliberate its overall directions and those of society. Thorpe does not address holistic theory directly or explain how it differs analytically from standard "sociological theory." My intent is to clarify these matters by extending facets of his argument to illuminate the interdependence between holistic theorizing and empirical-historical social science, which is necessary to create the type of "reflexive sociology" that Thorpe argues would make sociology more cosmopolitan and capable of addressing the turbulent sociopolitical conditions in the interregnum after neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to articles in the issue is presented including essays in honor of Professor Dorothy Pawluch, an essay on the state of sociology in India, and an article on the relevance of the concept of profession in building theories of contemporary complex socieities.

Based on a passage from the book Sociology in a New Key, in which Helmut Staubmann outlines a semantic reconstruction of the concept of aesthetics in its theoretical-sociological relevance, this paper presents some developments intended to complement Staubmann. I explore fundamentally different meanings of aesthetics, in particular those cultivated within idealist aesthetics in the context of theoretical philosophy. By highlighting key elements in the shift from this aesthetic tradition to classical social theory, specifically the expansion of the sensible realm, the enhanced cognitive aspect of the particular-sensible, and the formulation of distinct forms of intelligibility, this text endeavors to introduce a fresh layer to Staubmann’s analytical framework. It aims to assemble essential components for establishing a perspective on interpreting the diachronic evolution of sociological analysis. This perspective holds the potential to contribute to future projects focused on systematically redefining social theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bellah's 'Civil Religion in America' (1967) caught a moment in the American academy. It quickly became a much debated concept and although interest in the concept has periodically waxed and waned, the explication and contention continue fifty years later. It was both a great success and an albatross for Bellah himself, as the debates about the concept frustrated him to the point where he stopped using the phrase. In his consideration of Bellah's work, including civil religion, Bortolini's book provides a useful case for thinking about the dynamics of authorial intention, scholarly debates, and public interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the sixty years of his career, Robert Bellah has occupied an enigmatic position in the field of American sociology. Despite his triumphant academic career and his standing as a prominent advocate of sociology in the public sphere, he felt increasingly dissatisfied with the direction of sociology and believed he was underrecognized and misinterpreted by many of his peers. Drawing on Matteo Bortolini's A Joyfully Serious Man, this article reviews various biographical circumstances that may account for Bellah's ambiguous status as a sociologist. It then argues that the most significant source of tension with the sociological profession was Bellah's aversion to science as manifested in many of his writings, where he engaged in a relentless critique of positivism and scientism. This negative side of Bellah's epistemology, i.e. what he defined as bad or dangerous knowledge, is often overlooked both by Bortolini in his book and by commentators who try to derive a usable epistemology from Bellah's oeuvre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay uses the life of Robert Bellah to pose questions about the unfolding of ambition in academic settings with explicit, quasi-universalistic ranking. A crucial moment in all careers is the moment when one recognizes that there are many more talented than oneself. This moment is likely to come earlier for those in elite tracks, which enables such people to prepare various defensive strategies, which can prove advantageous at later and possibly more significant competitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses methods for using narratives of composite characters in qualitative social scientific writing. When anonymization is required, authors can use composite narratives to better protect participants, to compress data into intelligible sequences, and to avoid problematic claims to scientific authority. However, to date, authors of composite texts have failed to adequately explain how they deal with problems of sampling, selection, and sequence from an analytical perspective.Analytical qualitative researchers interested in creating composite character narratives can learn lessons, both positive and negative, from other forms of fiction that are in common usage in sociology. Drawing on a variety of fictive methods for clustering together cases and determining the objective possibility of narrative elements, this paper proposes a method of constructing composite narratives that forces their author to abductively construct theory and interrogate the narratives’ causal logics. The Sequence-Based Composites (SBC) method is explained with reference to four criteria for evaluating empirically grounded social scientific arguments: reliability, reactivity, representativeness, and replicability. Examples of composite character construction are drawn from an ethnographic study of news production in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the most important questions in the sociology of religion? And how would scholars answer them? This article explores what people consider the most important questions in the field. Sociologists tend to study what we can readily answer with data, but the questions that elicit the most interest turn out to be quite different. They are bigger, broader, and harder to answer empirically. A crowd-sourced poll identified what people consider the most important questions in the sociology of religion, which were then posed to scholars in the field. They provided nuanced and complex answers revealing a diversity of approaches involved in the study of religion. This unorthodox article invites the reader to listen in on dynamic conversations that bring scholars into dialogue with one another, revealing points of consensus, ongoing debate, areas where there are more questions than answers, and directions for future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]