Search

Copyright of Current Sociology is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Academic publishing is one of the most unequal areas of the circulation of ideas. Recent studies have analyzed the dominance of ISI-style standards and its consequences for scientific production in the periphery. This article delves into the Latin American publishing circuit and its performance in the midst of four different types of circuits in the world academic system: (a) mainstream ‘international’ publishing circuits, sustained by major private enterprises and publishing houses (Thomson Reuters, Elsevier, Google); (b) transnational networks and repositories built as open access (DOAJ, Dial-net, INASP) to create an alternative to previous (c) regional Southern circuits (LATINDEX, SCIELO, CLACSO, REDALYC, AJOL); and (d) national circuits based on local publications. Given that these four circuits all come into play in national scientific fields, this article addresses the case of Argentina in order to prove that these circuits are segmented, partly due to the hierarchies of the World Scientific System and partly to structural constraints and the local history of professionalization. Focusing on tenure evaluations for research positions at Argentina’s National Scientific Research Council (CONICET), the article examines the results of a survey among coordinators of the council’s evaluation committees in order to analyze the relationship between international publishing and tenure. By exploring the evaluative culture at CONICET, common trends are highlighted along with alternative forms of regional academic prestige. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to develop a statement of those conditions that facilitate and those that obstruct the internationalization of social science knowledge. The topic merits investigations if for no other reason than that the internationalization of culture of all forms is an increasingly visible and salient phenomenon in our time. This process is evident at many levels, the spread of science and technology, fueled by the intensity of international economic competition; the diffusion of ideologies, notably those of democracy and modernization; the growth of common norms associated with growing economic and political interdependence, and the growing flow of persons through migration and tourism and the diffusion of culture, especially popular culture, through the expanded international system of the media, especially television. This paper distinguishes among three aspects of knowledge-research, training and learning - and the content and quality of knowledge. Research refers to the formal creation and codification of knowledge. Considered analytically, this activity is not attached to any special kind of social structure; knowledge has been created and codified informally, for example, in peasant agriculture and traditional crafts, and chroniclers and historians have accumulated facts and lore about societies for many centuries.

Earlier attempts to define visual sociology have acknowledged that there is no real need to define visual sociology other than for bureaucratic legitimization: heads of departments want to see on paper what their staff members are teaching and what their students are studying; chairmen of research committees want to feel comfortable that research money is well spent. In a world of words, visual sociologists can do their work only to the extent that visual sociology is recognized by men of letters. This description is at least imaginative, but it limits the label of visual sociologists to those interested in photography. Michael Hill takes a broader view. He accentuates the relationship between sociologists and the visual arts, by defining the field as: "Exploration of the reflexive relationships between social structures, on the one hand, and the choice, apprehension, perception, cognition, and creation of visual imagery, on the other." There is no doubt that many other definitions and descriptions can be formulated and will be formulated in the future. It should be clear, however,that definitions, besides being instrumental in the communication between scholars, may also have a stultifying effect.

The life course of Chilean women has experienced profound transformations in the past decades. It has been argued that transitions to marriage and motherhood are being postponed as they are experienced by women at an older age and are becoming events that characterize an increasingly smaller part of the female population. These changes have been often interpreted as part of a process of individualization that would have reconfigured the cultural norms and social practices regarding gender roles and family formation in Chilean society. Nevertheless, the prevalence and diversification of the practices and norms that shape the transitions to marriage and motherhood at an empirical level remain unexplored. This article aims to assess the individualization of the life course of women in Chile by empirically analysing the destandardization of the practices and norms that shape the transitions to marriage and motherhood. By analysing data from the Encuesta Nacional Bicentenario Universidad Católica – Adimark (2009), it demonstrates that changes in the prevalence of the transitions to marriage and motherhood and the diversification of the practices and norms that shape their timing are ambivalent regarding destandardization. These results suggest that the life course of women in Chile is becoming individualized to some extent, but that this trend of cultural and social change is not consistent and uniform, but rather partial and fragmented, non-linear, and significantly conditioned by the social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although intimacy is an area characterized by great variety and complexity, both popular and academic discourses have traditionally revolved around a restricted number of associations, of which the family, the romantic couple and friendship bonds have resided at the very centre. In this article the author argues that an analytical shift that addresses intimacy in terms of a relational quality – a specific mode of interaction and a particular experience of closeness – instead of a set of relationships, may assist in exploring a wider range of phenomena. This approach is used to study Argentine tango dancing. Ethnographic fieldwork locates the search to the dim-lit dancehalls of Buenos Aires, San Francisco and Stockholm, and accounts for experiences of transitory semi-anonymous attachments. The study concludes tango to be a multifold intimate arena that unveils how complex webs of feelings are entangled with the social organization of attachments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Micromobilization research constitutes a vital stream within social movement studies. Despite a wealth of empirical research and recent advances in micromobilization theory, research is still hampered by a myriad of issues. This article identifies conceptual, empirical, and methodological weaknesses in the micromobilization literature and offers solutions. First, the author provides a clear definition of micromobilization by synthesizing two distinct, yet interrelated research streams that, on the one hand, emphasize the processes through which social movement organizations attempt to recruit and influence potential supporters and participants and, on the other hand, enumerate various analytically distinct steps that make up micromobilization. Using this as a springboard, the author then evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of a longstanding, popular model of micromobilization that he terms the ‘affinity-initiated model.’ This micromobilization model is extended in significant ways by merging insights from extant social movement, social psychology, and network analysis literatures, pinpointing novel and overlooked ways social ties, in particular, facilitate the differentiation of individuals at analytically distinct steps in the micromobilization process. Finally, the author identifies several avenues for future micromobilization research opened up by the analytic approach developed in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview and analysis of sustainable development from a sociological perspective. It is divided into three parts. The first presents selected relevant sociological research before there was ever a concept of ‘sustainable development’. The selected focus is on work falling under the rubrics of environmental sociology as well as development sociology. The second part briefly discusses the context and process that led to conceptualizing ‘sustainable development’. The third part considers the response of several sociological theories to sustainable development issues, with the focus on a selection of four major system theories: world systems theory, neo-Marxist ‘treadmill of production’ theory, ecological modernization theory and modern systems theory, all of which have addressed development issues and more recently sustainability questions. The article ends by identifying an ongoing global transformation, the sustainability revolution, which can be compared and contrasted to the Industrial Revolution. Whether this emerging revolution will take place fast enough and comprehensively enough to save the planet earth from multiple disasters remains to be seen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a long period of relative exclusion from serious consideration by social sciences, the study of culture and the arts has become a lively sociological arena in the United States, as it had already been in much of Europe. No longer a stepchild of the serious business of sociologists, the arts are, if not central, then at least a legitimate, as opposed to a frivolous subject. This flowering has come about despite a traditional anti-aesthetic orientation in American social science, and, until recently, relative retarded development of much contemporary European social science. Still, the position of the arts in the social science disciplines is likely to remain tenuous, and requires renewed justification as an intellectual enterprise. The reasons for this have to do both with the intellectual outlooks that have become embedded in understandings of the arts, and the social structures of their creation – or ‘production.’ The most promising developments in sociology are fostered by recognition of many more genres of creativity and their incorporation in the aesthetic domain. This growth is related to socioeconomic and political trends, consumerism, industrial transformation of global scope, though is not reducible to them. Arguably, they support new constructions and creativity at least as much as mass culture if not more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although it is often condemned as an imprecise concept, alienation continues to flourish as critique in contemporary philosophy, theology, and psychology, as well as in sociology. Historically originating in Roman law, where it referred to the transfer of land ownership, alienation has since been applied extensively to analyses of labor relations, politics, and culture. In the 19th century, Marx showed that workers’ alienation, their dehumanization and estrangement, was a consequence of the structure of exploitation in capitalist industry. The concern was echoed in Weber’s metaphor of the ‘iron cage’ as an outcome of rationalized structures, as well as in Durkheim’s conceptualization of anomie as a variant of alienation causing socially induced psychological states. Today, while research in the structural tradition does not assume that people necessarily are aware of their condition, researchers who assume that alienation is a conscious experience have invented scales to measure its intensity. Continuing both the structural and the psychosocial traditions, researchers now study alienation in relation to uses of digital technologies and new forms of exploitation in work, as well as in politics and popular culture. Alienation is also studied in families, especially in investigations of parenthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, almost as a rule, the military boasts a high level of public trust throughout the world. The Slovenian Armed Forces are among the most trusted institutions in the country. A comparative analysis of the public trust in the military in other countries, however, shows that the level of trust in the Slovenian military is below the global average. In this article, the level of trust in the Slovenian Armed Forces is presented and compared with the public trust in the military in other countries. This article presents the concepts of trust of Almond and Verba, Inglehart, Banfield and other authors, and discusses the level of trust in the military in Slovenia through these concepts. The analysis shows that several factors diminish trust in the military in Slovenian society: from a lack of knowledge and little interest in the military, defense and security matters, to dissatisfaction with political processes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Exploring the ‘globalization’ of the social sciences, this article first presents an historical interpretation of how transnational exchange in the social sciences has evolved. Earlier forms of international circulation are distinct from the more global arrangements that have emerged since the late twentieth century. Considering this globalizing field in more detail, it is argued that its predominant characteristic is a core–periphery structure, with a duopolistic Euro-American core, multiple semi-peripheries and a wide range of peripheries. Focusing on the global level, much of the existing research, however, has neglected the emergence of transnational regional structures. The formation of a transnational European field of social science is taken as an example of this process of transnational regionalization. The social sciences worldwide can thus be seen as a four-level structure. In addition to the local and national level, transnational regional as well as global structures have gained increasing importance and a better understanding of ‘globalization’ requires more precise studies of both levels, in their own right as well as in their evolving interconnectedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Current Sociology is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Current Sociology is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article offers the response of Nigel Fielding to the remarks of Celine-Marie Pascale and Paul Healy to the article about postmodernism. It mentions that the article began in 1999 and was presented at the German conference two days after the Twin towers attack. It states that the suggestion of Pascale to choose for moderate postmodernism without looking to its faults that going further than moderate position may not permit to persist on positivist which has role on analytic density. It notes that as Healy presents a political sense for understanding the multifaceted complexity of social phenomena and integrated social science without inhibiting the difference of postmodernism and the mainstream is a social science which realizes the odor of its own politics.

Copyright of Current Sociology is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Current Sociology is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The universal concepts of sociology are those that form the basic foundation of the discipline found in all human societies and valid for all times. Examples are the concepts of sanction, class, social stratification, social mobility, group, culture, values, religion, custom and others. These concepts are universally valid in the general and abstract sense but their historical and concrete manifestations are conditioned by their temporal, spatial and cultural frameworks. It is in the studies of these unique historical phenomena that the autonomous tradition has its roots. What is lacking in the non-western world is an autonomous social science tradition, generated and developed by local scholars, guided by the selection of problems from within the society, applying an independent concept of relevance in the collection and accumulation of research data and comparative attention to problems outside the country or region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Current Sociology is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

At the turn of the 21st century many of the citizens of advanced industrial societies are voting with their feet by entering into personal and intimate relationships that do not conform with legally institutionalized and culturally reified forms received from the past. At the risk of constructing an ostensibly essentialist history, one might say that same-sex relationships have always been there in the social traditions of the West. The roots of the political and philosophical traditions of the West are in a society deeply affirmative of homosexual relations of the mentor/acolyte model. Few easy generalizations flow from the anthropological record, but it is noteworthy how many non-western cultures have found a place for same-sex relationships in the overall social organization of production and reproduction. What is clear from the cross-cultural evidence is that at least some indigenous societies on every inhabited continent have socially valued same-sex relationships that include a sexual component in their make-up. Same-sex relationship recognition and even marriage rights, are an important step towards full participation in civil society.

Copyright of Current Sociology is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

During the Israeli election campaign in 1999 a surprising newspaper advertisement appeared. Under the heading "Gentlemen, It's Impossible Without the Ladies," it showed the candidates of the big parties, Dan Meridor, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, dressed in women's clothes. The ad called for more women in the Knesset. Surprising and unusual was the text beneath the photo: "Don't forget that every second voter is a woman. It is true: you all might be born leaders and excellent officers, but only women candidates in safe places on the party lists can represent the whole electorate." The advertisement was especially unusual in mentioning the connection between the political success of male aspirants following a military career and the political failure of women. In this article civil-military relations in Israel are explored from a gender perspective. On the one hand, it is asked whether the drafting of women has changed the masculinity of the defence forces. On the other hand, the impact the centrality of the military as an institution and the military discourse has on gender relations in society is explored.

In many models of social processes, an equilibrium state of the system exists, and in some models, relationships among variables at equilibrium are a major focus of attention. Equilibrium states may be said to represent a stable structure of the relationships among variables, and static models may for that reason be said to represent models of structure. They are sometimes also referred to as such, but it is preferred to use the label "models of structure" for models where the main focus of attention is on relationships between entities such as individuals or groups. The approaches to be surveyed in this article could, however, also be used to analyse relationships between variables. In fact, any kind of relationship between any kind of entity could be handled, for the models to be dealt with are usually quite abstract and sometimes very abstract. They rely on mathematics that deal with structures of sets. This is a mainstream of modem mathematics, and it offers an extremely powerful language for the analysis of the complexities of social structure. Two broad tasks are attempted in the models to be surveyed. One is to produce descriptions of social structure and to derive definitions of structural concepts such as clique, balance in structure, and hierarchy. The other task is to provide a basis for classifying and comparing social structures, such as kinship systems.

The article focuses on community research as a systematic study. as a systematic study, community research has its origins in the second half of the 19th century. Consequently a number of studies were made that were social critical in character. Data were collected for a given city on such social problems as poverty, crime, alcoholism, and prostitution. In the U.S. some realistic reports of slum areas in the big cities were made as early as 1880 by journalists and novelists, the so called muckrakers. These studies were made as a basis for programs of social improvement. About 1915 in the United States there developed a series of studies of farm communities which were not critical of the society but aimed at understanding the rural community as a basis for improving rural standards of living. The emphasis on social structure which was present in Middletown became the dominant theme in the Yankee City studies of W. Lloyd Warner. He used the concept of social class to make the social system of the community visible and understandable.

The article discusses sociology of international relations. The existing studies in the sociology of international relations fall into three main clusters. In the first place, there is some structure and some regularity of pattern in the international field that is non-political. International non-governmental organizations are the best example, but there are also purely sociological aspects of the functioning of international secretariats of the United Nations, its Specialized Agencies and regional bodies like the Organization of American States. A second cluster consists of studies that look upward from domestic social structure toward foreign policy and beyond. Studies of the positions taken by different social classes or different religious groups in relation to the Cold War or to the United Nations are representative. Sociological analysis gives explanatory clues to the relationships found. The third cluster of studies is centered on the effects of transnational experience on domestic attitudes and social structure. It is unfortunate that such studies often stop with the analysis of attitudes rather than attempting to discover the effects on behavior and relationships.

The article discusses the influence of women, precisely, maternal employment on the psychology and social structure of family. Our legislation concerning the position of woman, which represents the decisive problem of the family, is more progressive than in a number of more industrialized countries. However, in spite of the legislation, it appears in fact that practices lag the changes in social norms in this respect. The discrepancy between the values and norms upon which are based the statuses and the roles of individuals within the family on the one hand and the society on the other, give rise to a division of man's personality, more or less marked in various places. Maternal employment can be considered as a casual variable to stand for the influence exerted by upon the family. The process of industrialization and urbanization is developing in countries parallel to the process of involving women in the labor force and thereby into the economical and social life in the country. In effect one of the best indices of the impact of industrialization on the family can be found in the impact of the gainful industrial employment of the wife and mothers on the structure and functioning of the family.

The article presents bibliography of literature on social structure. The list includes literature on personalities, culture, and social structure, collective behavior, crowds, masses, sex, marriage, family, kinship, child rearing and youth problems.

The article presents a report on social stratification. For purposes of this report, social stratification is taken to be concerned with those forms of social differentiation which are usually associated, in English usage, with such words as caste, estate, class, social status and rank. Not all phenomena associated with these terms has been regarded as relevant. Such associations, even though they may involve a hierarchical organization in society, are not the concern here. Social mobility has been taken in its vertical rather than its horizontal sense. Vertical mobility is thought of in very broad terms, covering the movement of an individual in his career, of a family, movement between generations and the relative displacement both of occupational groups and even whole strata. In the compilation of this report, certain types of society, periods of history and forms of organization have been excluded. Apart from this, the author has also excluded consideration of stratification in the classical world.