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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical theory has already marked that technology often threatens civil liberties, personal autonomy, and rights. Heidegger, later Marcuse, emphasized how technology is not value-free in its own revealing power of the surrounding environment, external and inner nature. Throughout this paper, I explore how the aesthetic approach engages with critical theory and contributes to the sociology of media and communication. For this, I will theoretically survey the terms of sociality under the forces of immediate communication, ubiquitous surveillance, and the compression of time and space that Baudrillard and Virilio once problematized through the lens of critical technology theory to adapt it to media and communication studies. I contend that techno-aesthetics that converge with Rancière's dissensus can provide practical suggestions on an updated vocation of critical sociology. This article discusses the potential of aesthetic and social criticism of media for democratizing technology that Feenberg inserted. It is urgent to acknowledge the changing spatio-temporal aesthetic regimes that affect the societal imagination and limits of sociality and action to determine the next steps for achieving a commons-based society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michel Freitag developed a ground-breaking sociological theory synthesizing the thought of sociology's founders into the form of a dialectical sociology that conceives of the symbolic as ontological to social reality. After outlining his conceptualization of the historical evolution of society through its 'modes of reproduction', we will see how his analysis of contemporary societal transformations rests on a critical theory of communication and technology that, while entering a dialogue with the works of the Frankfurt school, especially those of Habermas, seeks to overcome their inherent contradictions. According to Freitag, the development of capitalist globalization alters the very substance of society as it tends to morph itself into a self-regulating cybernetic system. His sociology allows us to apprehend phenomena tied to the development of contemporary digital technologies such as the drive towards a new form of algorithmic governmentality fueled by digital oligopolies that increasingly dominate globalized capitalism, the rise of fake news in the era of post-truth and the transformation of subjectivity. Finally, his critique enables potent reflection on the dialectical possibilities of overcoming the dynamics of contemporary alienation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on re-reading Khaldun's economic thought in present times, highlighting his deep insight into the culture of his day. Topics include Christian Fuchs' approach to demonstrating Khaldun's anticipations of key modern concepts, Khaldun's nominations as the founder of sociology, a pioneering economist, and the first modern historian, and Fuchs' claim of Khaldun for critical political economy and his relevance to critical communication analysis.

This article examines the nature, movement, and controversies of the information flowing through a Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) community-based program in a predominantly Latino migrant neighborhood of South Los Angeles known as 'the Hispanic Outreach' (HO). Combining Actor-Network and Critical Race theories enables me to examine the world of police and Latino civilians through the groups, social actions, facts, and objects that compose it, as one single, unified set of interwoven associations and processes. Findings show that the HO claims to serve the public's interests in safety in high crime environments but instead stirs local interracial conflict and Latino residents' fears over questions of citizenship, belonging, and access to resources, and deepens state penetration into communities it deems as racial threats. I show how networks are state tools that reproduce and reinforce racial power and situate these findings within the field of Critical Sociology, particularly the areas of policing and Latino studies. And this article ends with a discussion of several potential research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the transformation of welfare states carries far-reaching implications for property relations, there is an astonishing amnesia regarding property in research concerning the welfare state. To date, the French sociologist Robert Castel is the only thinker to have illuminated the connection between property and social rights: he understands transfer payments and public infrastructures as social property and describes them as rehabilitation of the previously propertyless. Starting out from Castel's concept of social property, the article discusses its strengths and weaknesses and elaborates conceptually on what it would mean to think of social rights consistently as social property. The authors argue that it is a worthwhile endeavour to think further with and go beyond Castel's concept of social property. This allows not only to think about public alternatives to private property and to theorise the dismantling of social rights as expropriation, but also to think further on the democratisation of social rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on keynote speech by the then Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. Topics include range of social movements arrayed in opposition to colonialism, poverty, and racism mobilized during the Democratic Convention in Chicago to protest; and taking the initiative by planning workshops and social actions to unsettle the discipline's establishment sociology.

Recent gentrification policies from the municipality of Rotterdam have involved the demolition of social housing, resulting in the displacement of migrant communities. These developments have been criticised by several United Nations Special Rapporteurs as violating the human right to adequate housing. Through qualitative content analysis of municipal policy documents and expert interviews, this article examines how whiteness is preserved in Rotterdam municipal housing policies between the years 2006 and 2022. Using critical race theory, this study identifies three key stages through which whiteness is preserved: in the conceptualisation of theories underpinning policies; the language codified in policy documents, and the implementation of the policy. This research offers a clear example of systemic racism today; how it operates through policies that villainize low-income migrants and justifies the maintenance of the status quo of racial hierarchy in Rotterdam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a socio-political context where antimuslim racism has gained momentum, this article aims to understand Muslim women's everyday life experiences of racialization in Sweden. More importantly, it aims to highlight what strategies are developed in order to navigate and counter these experiences. By using the concepts of double consciousness, orientations, and respectability together with an understanding of Muslims as a racialized category, the article shows how experiences of antimuslim racism are handled by the women in different ways, both on individual and collective level. Being a Muslim woman in Sweden requires developing strategies and sometimes engaging in respectability politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the first ethnographic account of Foxconn in Zhengzhou—the world's largest iPhone manufacturing base—this paper argues that a new labor regime features 'hegemonic precarity' has arisen since capital's move to inland China. Despite being offered formal contracts with long-term benefits, inland Foxconn workers choose a more precarious employment status. I argue that this surprising pattern is a result of the interaction between dynamics at the point of production and that of social reproduction. Through the mechanism of 'hoarding of time', Foxconn's management pays relatively high wages to a minority of workers while keeping the majority's wages minimal. Meanwhile, changing dynamics in the realm of social reproduction makes Foxconn workers, especially women with children, constantly struggle between work and the family. Working together, these factors have led to extremely high turnover rates, bleak prospects for labor solidarity, and the rise of 'gig manufacturing' in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contends that the Zionist policies implemented by Israel had and continue to have a grave impact not only on the Palestinians in historic Palestine alone but also follows them in the diaspora, where some Palestinians have taken refuge. This article argues that Israel's apartheid regime, exposed by various international Human Rights Organizations, is not a recent discovery. Apartheid, the exclusion of the natives, and their racialization have accompanied the Zionist movement since its inception. Crucial questions raised in this paper include how Palestine and the Palestinians are conceived by Zionism, in and outside of Israel, and how they are perceived by the West, especially within the Canadian context. This paper pays special attention to comparing the experience of Palestinians with that of North America's Indigenous population, specifically concerning Israel's and Canada's colonial policies towards the Indigenous peoples. It also discusses the impact of Israel's policies of silencing and vilification that doggedly follow Palestinians into the diaspora: vilifications and silencing enacted by the Israel lobby through its various Zionist (Jewish) branches, whose primary role is to silence and vilify the Palestinians and curb criticism of Israel and Zionism. This policy, it is argued, is strongly supported by Canada, structurally, institutionally and through media propaganda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Settler colonial projects erase Indigenous peoples and their histories to justify expropriation of sovereign land. Educational curriculum plays a central role in settler colonialism by denying both long-standing connections to the land and dehumanizing those on it, relegating them to objects to be controlled or assimilated by colonizers, positioned as the colonized land's rightful owners. This has long been the case for Palestinians. Violent expulsion from their land began with the settler colonial Zionist project in the late-19th century, a time of global colonization, and continues into the present, alongside the denial of Palestinian subjectivity and 'permission to narrate' their own history in public, political, and academic discourses. This paper examining US-based college-level introductory sociology textbooks finds that they replicate and perpetuate colonial narratives through Orientalist ascriptions and Palestinian de-Indigenization, while eliding the settler colonial and apartheid conditions under which they live, thereby contributing to the settler project themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces Palestinian women's political mobilization for social change emphasizing historical and contemporary involvements in national struggles against colonial occupation and patriarchal oppression. Second, critical Middle Eastern feminists' analyses, through their attunement to gendered orientalism, unmask a troubling pattern of culturizing categories of violence against women (VAW) within global feminist and human rights discourses. In particular, culturized framings of gender-based violence in the lives of Palestinian women ignores the multiple sources of violence and power of settler colonialism as ongoing everyday realities. Third, I share how social science instruments like the Conflicts Tactics Scale (CTS), criticized by US gender scholars, is widely used as a measure of VAW in the global South. By overestimating interpersonal gender-based violence among Palestinian women, Global feminist discourse and the otherness of women outside the West continue to reciprocally constitute each other. Thus covertlsolidifying global feminist discourse universalistic assumptions in scientific and objective forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are two distinct modes of critique operative in Bourdieu's 'critical sociology'. Bourdieu sometimes engages in what I call the realist mode of critique. This is premised on the idea that naïve experience of the social world dissimulates real relations of domination, which critique then reveals. At other times, Bourdieu engages in what I call the historicist mode of critique, which denaturalizes the doxic experience of the social order by demonstrating its arbitrary character. Whereas realist critique claims that the social world really is other than it appears, historicist critique suggests that it could be otherwise. This tension between the two modes of critique is not unique to Bourdieu, but also present in the Polanyian literature and in the Western Marxist tradition. By distinguishing between the two modes of critique, my aim is to clarify an oft-implicit division that cuts across different critical traditions in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore puzzling outcomes in a Virginia school district: in 2018, the Williamsburg-James City County School Board voted to redraw attendance boundaries to achieve greater racial and socio-economic integration among its middle schools, yet abandoned similar efforts for high schools. Drawing on Critical Race perspectives, we conducted a content analysis of archival materials, including school board meeting transcripts, to analyze the conditions under which school decision-makers mobilize to enact equity-oriented policy reforms. We found that school board members abandoned high school rezoning in the face of fierce opposition from white, affluent residents who saw school reassignments as a threat to their entitlements to a highly rated school and to their property values. For the middle schools, board members avoided white families' entitlements, which neutralized opposition, at the same time as strong community advocacy in favor of equity and integration shifted the political landscape. This activated 'interest convergence' among school board members supportive of equity and resulted in the approval of middle-school attendance boundaries that produced greater racial and socioeconomic integration. This case underscores the importance of community advocacy for equity-based reforms; however, the scope of these efforts may be limited to changes that do not substantively threaten white parents' perceived entitlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the contradictions of neoliberal urbanism in the context of Indian cities. Focusing on gated neighborhoods as a quintessential feature of neoliberal urbanism, it unpacks the changing meaning and significance of gated neighborhoods (GNs) and their representative organizations, the Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs), in mediating the relationship between the propertied middle classes and the urban poor. A few decades into the making, I argue that neoliberal urbanism is beginning to produce contradictory outcomes through its specific elements such as the GNs. Using the case of domestic workers, I show that domestic workers are performing collective actions and targeting GNs as a whole. Domestic workers' actions are subverting the purpose of physical features and institutional features of GNs to their advantage as workers. How can middle-class residents' tools of control and exclusion become the new means of power and resistance for a section of the urban poor—domestic workers? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology is one of the major disciplines to foster understanding and protection of the livelihoods of local people. For instance, the discipline can describe the linkage between the environment and people and the effects of environmental change on local groups of people in a Delta country such as Bangladesh. However, the imperial philosophy of modernity that dominates the discipline and which is evident in the Sociology department at the University of Dhaka (UofD) underscores a considerable distance between academic conceptualizations of local perspectives on issues such as climatic change and the actual views of the local people of Bangladesh. Grounded on this assertion, this paper explores a question: What are the challenges for Sociology to represent Delta people and protect their social justice? The paper depends on the content analysis of sociological practices at UofD: imperial modernity and climatic adaptation. The findings of the paper argue that Sociology has been failing to represent the local meanings of climatic change due to the domination of imperial conceptualizations of modernity. Climate finance conceptualized by a Western perspective, and Sociology, as a discipline, fails to represent locally contextualized meanings related to climate finance; thus, the marginalized groups of people are increasingly facing survival challenges responsible for climate apartheid. Only a decolonized Sociology can challenge this imperial domination and play an effective role in reducing the discipline's gap of understanding of the local people and in promoting social justice in Delta Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1906, W.E.B. Du Bois published an article 'L'Ouvrier Negre en Amerique' ('The Negro Worker in America') which draws from original survey data and historical analysis to develop a theory of Black labors' structural disadvantage in post Civil War US capitalism. 'L'Ouvrier Negre en Amerique' has essentially been forgotten. It has been accessible only to French speakers and has yet to be the subject of analysis or commentary. It deserves the full attention of not just Du Bois scholars, but all scholars who seek to understand the relationship between race, class, and capitalism in antebellum and post-Civil War America. Du Bois shows how White organized labor restricted Black workers' access to union protections and the booming post-war labor market. His analysis highlights the interplay between racist ideology and the forces of racialized capitalism and reveals that the 'early' Du Bois critical, historical, materialist and attuned to socialist and labor politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advent of digitalization, the more techno-optimist among critics of capitalism have articulated new calls for post-work and post-scarcity economics made possible by new advances in information and communication technology. Quite recently, some of this debate shifted for calls for digital-democratic planning to replace market-based allocation. This article will trace the lineages of this shift and present these new calls for digitally enabled and democratic planning. I will then argue that much of the discussion focuses on capitalism's laws of economic motion, while rendering less visible capitalism's social, political, and ecological 'conditions of possibility'. To remedy this shortcoming I will ask how these fit into the recent debate and suggest avenues to extend the discussion of democratic planning in that way. Concretely, I will discuss features of a postcapitalist mode of reproduction that abolishes capital's subordination of non-waged and waged care work. The following part will focus on both planning's need to calculate ecological externalities and consequently determine sustainable and egalitarian paths for social and technological development on a world scale. The last section will elaborate on the 'democratic' in 'democratic planning' in terms of planning's decision-making, multi-scalar politics, and politics of cultural recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to an old legend, Vladimir Lenin, the founder of Soviet Marxism, overlooked Karl Marx's theory of alienation. For Marxist humanists, this theory underlies the emancipatory thrust of Marx's thought, and since, in their view, Lenin's acolytes ignored alienation, communist regimes failed to empower the workers. Considering these claims, this article challenges the legend that Lenin himself neglected Marx's theory of alienation. It argues that this theory was central to Lenin's Marxism. In fact, Lenin was among the first to discover the concept in Marx's work, although he also analysed the concept independently. Like Marx, Lenin criticised capitalist alienation and defined communism as a non-alienated society. After the October Revolution, however, Lenin struggled to realise this goal. Responding to a failed European socialist revolution, a brutal civil war, a deadly famine and widespread cultural backwardness, Lenin made concessions to alienation. Nevertheless, Lenin's legacy provides an important insight into alienation today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an ethnographic study on the Bukusu number system and the connections between Indigenous knowledge and patriarchy. It examines the ways patriarchy is embedded in everyday knowledge through a number system that has deep gender hierarchy symbolisms. The findings show strong connection between everyday knowledge and social norms that define the status of men and women. While this article is centered on Bukusu society in Kenya, it is premised on the understanding that patriarchy is a pervasive social problem that goes beyond Indigenous societies as evident in the feminist critiques of contemporary societies. Just as Durkheim traced the genesis of society to the simplest forms of rules associated with totemic beliefs, this article also points to the roots of patriarchy in Indigenous society so as to draw attention to the variety of ways in which patriarchy is manifested. By incorporating feminist critiques of patriarchy, it shows conceptual connections between the blatant manifestation of patriarchy in Indigenous societies and the latent, albeit oppressive, manifestations of patriarchy in modern societies. Overall, the article provides deep conceptual insights into the intersection of knowledge systems and patriarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestic workers—specifically in-home health care workers, childcare providers, and house cleaners—are generally concentrated at the bottom of the US labor market. Yet, there is also substantial stratification among and within each of these occupations. This article explores the heterogeneity in pay and working conditions among domestic workers in the 21st-century United States, which has been understudied to date. After sketching national patterns of stratification in this set of occupations, the focus shifts to qualitative evidence on inequalities among domestic workers drawn from focus groups conducted in New York City shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the impact of the pandemic on in-home domestic workers is briefly considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worker misclassification is a form of precarious employment in which employers illegally designate their employees as 'independent contractors' to cut labor costs. Non-standard employment arrangements and the emergence of the misclassification problem are expressions of neoliberal economic reform and attendant shifts in managerial strategy. Although scholars and government statisticians have documented the prevalence of worker misclassification, extant research on labor-organizing campaigns in response to this practice is lacking. This paper presents case studies of two successful organizing campaigns against worker misclassification: (1) a United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBCJA) effort in the Northeastern construction industry and (2) a Teamsters campaign focused on the West Coast port trucking industry. Both campaigns employ similar frames highlighting competition, free markets, and the necessity of industrial change to achieve these ideals. We conclude with a discussion of the prospects and limitations of these organizing strategies given the countervailing political and economic headwinds posed by neoliberal restructuring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We know a great deal about global capital mobility in traditional industries, such as manufacturing, but very little about emerging capital mobility in the gig economy. Using the case of Canadian Foodora, a multinational platform that left Canada in 2020, I situate global capital mobility in the local labour market. Drawing upon interview data with former Foodora couriers and ethnographic data collected from a gig workers' union, I investigate the social, economic and political subjectivities of gig workers activated by a global platform's capital mobility. My findings reveal unexpected parallel effects caused by capital mobility in the gig economy and traditional industries. My research highlights how heterogeneity is salient for understanding divergent worker subjectivities. The economic and social impacts upon financially dependent gig workers and the emotional connections of devoted and organized gig workers challenge the dominant discourse that gig workers are simply part-timers and hence free from work commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the literature on white habitus, colorblindness, diversity ideology, and happy talk, I argue that rhetorical maneuvers are key aspects of white habitus that allow whites to construct a non-racist self by drawing on colorblind discourses. To explore how white habitus influences interview dynamics when the respondent and interviewer are of a different race, I conducted 48 interviews with whites from rural and urban areas of the Greater Buffalo Area. Specifically, I examine the relationship between white habitus, a non-racist presentation of self, and rhetorical maneuvers that whites deploy when talking about race and immigration. I also introduce two new frames of colorblindness: differentiation and civility. The civility frame conflates friendliness and civility with anti-racism and is used as evidence that everything is fine. The differentiation frame attempts to draw distinctions between themselves ("non-racist white people") and other whites ("bad apples"). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of partisanship, rightwing media, and social media on attitudes about contemporary conspiracy theories. Mainstream scholarly views that 'both sides' of the political aisle indulge routinely in such theories are challenged. I adopt a Gramscian hegemonic framework that examines rising rightwing conspiracy theories as a manifestation of mass false consciousness in service of a political-economic system that serves upper-class interests. Issues examined include the QAnon movement, 'big lie' voter fraud conspiracism, and Covid-19 conspiracy theories, and the way they related to partisanship, rightwing media, and social media. I provide evidence that Republican partisanship, rightwing media consumption, and social media consumption are all significant statistical predictors of acceptance of modern conspiracy theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examine the social phenomenon known as 'QAnon'. While QAnon is typically thought of as an exclusively online cultural phenomenon, and thus easily dismissed, it has played a significant role in promoting physical acts of violence—including multiple murders and the attack on the United States Capital on 6 January 2021. Utilizing a qualitative analysis of 300 hours of QAnon-related content, we argue that the widespread beliefs held by QAnon supporters were only possible due to the confluence of feelings of distrust in government and other public officials, purveyors of QAnon that profited in the movement's success, and a populist digital media environment in which extremist ideas are housed and promoted. We conclude by asking if this is a phenomenon created by greater connectivity, or if this is a byproduct of late-stage capitalism in which social relations continue to be atomized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses Trump's failed self-coup, its authoritarian backwash, and threats to democracy. It analyzes his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which contributed to his 2020 election loss and deepened the political polarization that led to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. The essay also discusses how the forty-year acceleration of economic inequality and sociopolitical de-democratization generated a legitimacy crisis of the hegemonic, neoliberal regime that opened way for Trumpist ethnoracial nationalism. The Trump presidency and pandemic increased the intensity of the political-economic contradictions and transparency of the attenuated relationship of democracy and capitalism. In the consequent "interregnum," fundamental threats to democratic electoral institutions persist, yet a clear, realistic vision of an alternative democratic regime and the political bloc to bring it into being have yet to be forged. The fate of American democracy rides on overcoming the remarkable denial and normalization of the Trump coup attempt and on forging new safeguards for electoral institutions. Preventing a recurrence, however, requires a progressive transformation of Trumpism's de-democratized seedbed – neoliberal capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 6 January 2021, Trumpist insurrection is in continuity with centuries of white mob violence in the United States, going back to the thwarted 1861 attempt to attack the Capitol in order to overturn Lincoln's election. At the same, time Trumpism as a modern phenomenon also exhibits links and affinities to contemporary global neofascist and rightwing populist movements. Although small towns and rural areas were heavily represented among the participants on 6 January, analysts need—in the spirit of Marx—to avoid the Lassallean trap of writing off rural populations as uniformly conservative. In this sense, we need to grasp the pervasive racism at the root of Trumpism and its analogues without falling into a view of rural areas as monolithic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists commonly trace the concept of racial capitalism to Cedric Robinson. However, this lineage is problematic because it strips the theoretical framing of its radical origins. Recent scholarship argues the term racial capitalism originates earlier in the Marxist tradition in South Africa. Furthermore, the broader problematic of racism as integral to the maintenance and promotion of capitalism, originates even earlier than the term itself. I argue, the problematic of racial capitalism, in which ideologies of human differentiation are used to maintain and promote dispossession and coerced labor within capitalism, is integral to W.E.B. Du Bois’ scholarship on US imperialism during the Cold War. Furthermore, Du Bois articulated a critique of racial capitalism that also functioned as a critique of the American sociology of race. However, the Phelps Stokes Fund promoted American sociology’s ‘race relations’ paradigm to marginalize this critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how working-class activists challenged and overcame political fear narratives during the anti-water charges campaign in Ireland (2014–2016), with specific focus on the ‘sinister’ narrative, an attempt by the government and its supporters to frame working-class protestors as violent, irrational and extremist. Rather than subscribing to the position that political fear is ubiquitous or the reflection of a general societal malaise, this paper follows Jeffries’ argument that political fear is mediated, contested and contradicted. While political fear operates most effectively when targeting expectations for normal living, it is these same expectations that offer fertile ground for opposing fear threats. Drawing on interviews from activists, this paper shows how the ‘normal living’ becomes a key context in which ‘deviance framing’ around class and gender can be reappropriated/reframed by activists, particularly through the deployment of counter spectacles and through the reframing of what constitutes legitimate emotional responses to government-initiated fear threats. Finally, while political fear can have an individualising effect, this paper demonstrates how subjective and individual acts of transgression are mediated through a collective and community lens as the crucial element in overcoming political fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January 2024, Florida’s Board of Education eliminated the sociology course, ‘Principles of Sociology’ as one of its core requirements for obtaining a general social science education in its college and university system. Florida’s Commissioner of Education, Manny Diaz, led the charge, claiming that sociology has been ‘hijacked by left wing activists’ and is a purveyor of ‘woke ideology’. Some within the profession would agree with Diaz, and certainly, many university administrators would as well. Of course, there are varying representations of sociology, and what Diaz and others are targeting is critical sociology and its commitment to the interrogation of power. However, these political dynamics are not new. The history of critical sociology has reflected a similar pattern that it is being played out currently. The ebbs and flows of critical sociology’s place within the discipline, the state and profession’s suppression of it, its resurgence linked to external social and political forces, and its precarious existence within the university have been true of critical sociology since its origins. This paper offers a historical context for better understanding the current attack on the field of sociology and raises the question, what should critical sociologists do about it? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines pandemic governance towards migrant communities in Germany in the context of mobilisation and demobilisation of state–society relations during the COVID-19 crisis. By studying how informality is reproduced in social practices and community networks as a response to top-down governance practices in the case of Assyrians – a quintessential diaspora community that settled in Germany through various migratory waves starting from the 1960s – this article aims to explore the bottom-up dynamics of governance practices among migrant communities. The study identifies three key themes for studying bottom-up dynamics of governance: informality embedded in everyday practices in response to formal governance, particularly vaccine policies; the existence of alternative epistemologies based on mistrust towards authorities, manifested in dual narratives; and the articulation of migrant agency in navigating top-down structures. Adopting a grounded theory approach, the study utilises theoretical sampling. Data were collected from various sources, including reports, newspaper articles, official statements and press releases from migrant organisations, alongside interviews with key migrant stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of pandemic governance on state regimes is a topic of lively debate. While some researchers suggest that governments may use a ‘state of exception’ to consolidate their power and introduce new methods of control, others see it as an opportunity for new civil society initiatives and social innovation. In this paper, we examine both the actions and discourses of the Polish government and its associated actors and the independent bottom-up responses of Polish society and how these were incorporated or rejected by the government. Our primary focus is on public health governance, including quarantine policies, the management of scarce personal protective equipment, related narratives and societal responses. This study is based primarily on desk research, analysis of key legislation and regulations tailored to the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland and analysis of social media (X/Twitter) discourse related to COVID-19. Our research reveals a crisis not only of governance but primarily of the neoliberal capitalist state. We conclude that governance during the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland showed uneven patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the standard formulation, the Marxist theory of the state implies that socialism requires revolution: Reformist social policy generates capital flight and capital flight undermines reform. I show that this mechanism, while plausible, turns out to have little empirical merit. State theory correctly points to an "accumulation" function whereby capitalist states depend on revenue and must therefore worry about the reforms that undermine profitability. But this accumulation function has been overwhelmed, historically, by a more powerful "legitimation" function: Popular social expenditures in rich capitalist democracies tend to grow and only rarely decline, even during the so-called neoliberal period. This article considers both sides of this debate. First, I propose (and predict) a path to socialism by way of mushrooming social policy. And second, I argue that if revolution is the only hope for socialism, then socialism is off the table; the revolution must be betrayed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing a racialized gendered lens, we explore the perceptions of status threat and victimhood among a sample of White Americans following the 2016 presidential election. Specifically, we draw upon such theoretical and empirical work to frame our analyses of the associations between perceptions of a white "victim" ideology and anti-Black Lives Matter (BLM) sentiments and how such associations may be conditioned by support for Trump and holding patriarchal gender normative beliefs. We propose that the BLM movement may be perceived as a "threat" to many White Americans. Furthermore, we believe Whites' anti-BLM sentiments will be enhanced by support for Trump, given his racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and oppressive tendencies. Moreover, we believe that these associations will differ based on gender and beliefs in patriarchal gender norms, as White men and women are likely to feel status threat in varied ways. Mix support for our propositions and complex gendered differences are revealed. Implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on reflecting on the state of sociology. Topics include moving to microeconomic analysis and a reliance on mathematical modeling, rational expectations, and committed to understanding society as the product of data analysis; and heterodox economic and critical sociological research predicated on the idea about contemporary market capitalism.

The article presents the discussion on Annual Review of Sociology conveying the perceptions of sociology's evolution and assessment of longterm viability. Topics include scholar of inequality and culture, race and racism, gender, and poverty, focusing mainly within the institution of education; and coming at the sacrifice of epistemic, methodological, and social pluralism in the discipline.

The purpose of the following article is to analyze childcare strategies in Uruguay with data from the recent Care Strategies Survey. The main question that guides this article is what are the elements that favor the institutionalization of part of the burden of childcare (attendance and hours at childcare facilities for children under and over the age of 3). Gender mandates, which manifest through the maternalism index, contribute to the use of institutions, since traditional ideas about the caregiving role of mothers have effects on less institutionalization. At the same time, mothers' access to work and higher levels of household income increases the probability of using institutions. Lastly, the defamiliarization of childcare depends on cultural mandates and, to the same extent, on the material conditions to access services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decades, Mexico has hosted one of the world’s deadliest internal conflicts. There are few global parallels to the scale of killing, disappearances, mass graves, feminicides, kidnappings, extortion, murder of social activists and violence against journalists. Predominant interpretations and governmental narratives cast Mexico’s conflict as owing fundamentally to state weakness and criminal organizations bidding to control drug flows. This article advances a different interpretation. Drawing from structuralist perspectives, the article underscores the extensive criminogenic dynamics set in motion by Mexico’s radical commitment to neoliberal transformation. Similarly, the article underlines the extent to which violence in many cases transpires less from drug conflicts than the creation of new export markets and new commodity chains. Turned invisible by a ‘Drug War’ narrative, Mexico represents a powerful lens into the social violence generated by and paving the way towards our neoliberal futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that race must be a central consideration in understanding migration in Korea, where international migrants are rapidly reshaping the national landscape. While migration scholarship on Korea has analyzed various policy trajectories, it has predominantly focused on three aspects—liberal democracy, ethnicity, and gender—largely overlooking the significance of race. First, it assumes that liberal democracy will eventually supersede xenophobia without critically examining its assumptions that are both racialized and teleological in nature. Second, by prioritizing ethnicity, it interprets discrimination against migrants through the notion of uni-ethnicity and a fear of foreignness without delving into Korea’s deeply rooted fixation on race. Third, it overemphasizes gendered migration, regarding Korea’s demographic crisis as a primary reason for accepting migrant women as biological reproducers. This paper contends that all three aspects are intricately connected to race, including Korea’s aspiration for whiteness and abjection of blackness, which significantly shape migration dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Street vending was criminalized in the city of Los Angeles since the 1930s. The Los Angeles Street Vendor Campaign (LASVC) utilized several framing tactics over the last several years in order to mobilize participants to decriminalize and legalize the profession of street vending. This article applies frame alignment theory to illustrate how the LASVC reached its goals. This case study utilizes qualitative interviews of key players in the LASVC movement and a content analysis of LASVC'S Facebook page to document their push toward decriminalization over the course of 1 year. The LASVC transformed their narrative from issues of immigration and labor rights and reframed street vending as a women's justice issue. By doing so, the LASVC extended the boundaries of their frames to incorporate the voices of women of color whose online and on-the-ground efforts to mobilize a larger population manifested during an era of the fourth wave feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that U.S. education reforms for "failing" schools are strikingly similar to a domestic Structural Adjustment Program; and that comparing the two clarifies: how K–12 schools are neoliberalized and how neoliberalism's key feature is the making of a larger yet less democratic state. The study contrasts with the scholarship claiming that reforms epitomized by the "No Child Left Behind Act" are neoliberal because they stem from interests in privatization for capital accumulation. The analysis focuses on a "failing" school navigating federal reforms in New York State, drawing on education policy, school documents, ethnography, and interviews. It shows how the neoliberal state took power from local school authorities, and largely did not shrink the state via privatization. This work illustrates how neoliberal reforms for "failing" schools are at least as much about power as they are about profits and demonstrates the large-scale continuity in neoliberal restructuring strategies and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]