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This paper argues that social theory can cast light on some of the main themes in current debates about trans issues. It considers four such themes: social classification and social control; tensions between individual and group rights; access to public spaces; and the relationship between personal pronouns and social identity. In so doing, it seeks to reframe local disagreement and polemic through more general questions about our modes of living together, and concludes that these debates are at bottom about the future of civility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The multiple problems that the planet is currently experiencing—climate crisis, conventional and unconventional wars, planetary disenchantment with political systems, growth of inequality, increase in all kinds of intersectional violence, destructuring of the political economy of morality, etc.—are not a favorable scenario for thinking about hope. This paper nevertheless offers a summary presentation of the sociology of hope, presenting some of its central sources and components as well as a proposed study agenda for the future. This article seeks to foster discussion of what could be the central axes of a sociology of hope. To achieve this purpose, the following argumentative strategy was chosen: (a) the "place" of hope is explored in some classics of sociology, (b) the central components of a sociological investigation of hope are synthesized, and (c) an agenda is presented as a summary for a future development of a sociology of hope. The article seeks to draw attention to the urgency of hope as an important element for the future of sociology and social sciences in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of "environment" is ambiguous in social theory. Sometimes it is wielded like a "tyrant" which moulds subjects as if they were a simple reflection of its environment; other times it is treated as if the environment is a "slave" of subjects whose agency can transform it. This paper reflects on the complex interaction between people and their environments. Social theory cannot establish a univocal, abstract, final explanation of the influence of the environment on people's behaviour and identity. Each environment will have a situational configuration that will have different consequences depending on other biological and cultural traits of the subject. Each specific situation must be analysed empirically to understand this complex interaction. The subject-environment mismatch creates "social folds" — that is wrinkles which open new social spaces and enable freedom. The modulation between environment and subject creates risks to freedom, but also liberating opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are numerous conceptions of violence today, such as physical, psychological, emotional, structural, and epistemic. The question of which social phenomena are to be described as violence is itself a matter of furious dispute. In social theory, there is a widespread tendency to distinguish between ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’ conceptions of violence. In this scheme, modern violence is primarily physical, while postmodern violence takes places across a broad spectrum of forms. The paper questions this binary. The co-occurrence and conflict between these forms of violence leads to a third form, which I call refigured violence. The refiguration of violence can be observed in three developments, which are mediatisation, polycontexturalisation, and translocalisation. I provide one illustration of these considerations with the example of so-called shock sites on the internet. In so doing, I emphasise that the sociology of knowledge can provide a valuable perspective for making sense of contemporary discourses about violence in all their complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]