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This article interrogates shared reading between parents and young children, theorised as 'sensory affinities', understood through a sociological lens. I argue that reading cannot be confined to educational aspects, and towards increased prominence for relational dimensions. I explore the narratives of 29 parents/carers of reading with young children. Drawing on data on the embodied aspects of reading, Mason's concept of affinities illuminates the sensory facets of reading applied to family intimacies. Interventions have hitherto distilled literacy from the wider social context. However, an understanding of reading in the context of families from diverse backgrounds, yields insights into the sensory character of everyday family life. Findings are of significance to sociology broadly, and specifically, families and relationships. Centring families facilitates a fuller understanding of literacy practices. Finally, the focus on an everyday, tangible practice such as reading can support understandings of hidden and taken-for-granted dimensions of family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While previous research has focused on terrorist attacks and natives' attitudes towards immigration, we examine the effect of anti-refugee attacks on refugees' attitude towards the host country. We use survey data from the 33rd wave of the German Socio-Economic Panel as the fieldwork period overlapped with the infamous anti-refugee riots in Bautzen and as the survey includes a refugee sample. Making use of this natural experiment, we find significant and negative short-term effects of the riots on respondents' perception of Germany, as well as low geographic variation. Such natural experiments in the form of unexpected events during survey design offer social scientists the possibilities to identify causal effects from observational survey data as they split respondents into a control and treatment group. Given the vast amount of (cross-)national survey data, often including specific subsamples, our study demonstrates the great potential of natural experiments for sociological research on minority groups in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses two seemingly unrelated but homologous challenges to established sociological thinking, namely machine learning technologies and postcolonial critique. Both of these confront conventional human-centric sociological notions. Where the rise of machine learning should prompt sociologists to take the agency of nonhuman systems seriously, postcolonial critique challenges the idea of Eurocentric human agency. I discuss whether this dual agency challenge can be addressed through Latour's actor-network theory and Luhmann's sociological systems theory – both of which explicitly aim to transcend classical human-centric approaches. I argue that Latour's work can align with postcolonial sociology. However, despite broadening the notion of agency, his actor-network concept remains strongly human-centric. It merely expands the range of actors with which humans engage rather than analysing interactions among nonhuman actants, such as machine learning systems. In contrast, such interactions can be understood through Luhmann's theorisation, which, however, can be subjected to postcolonial critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social mobility in the cultural sector is currently an important issue in government policy and public discussion, associated with perceptions of a collapse in numbers of working-class origin individuals becoming artists, actors, musicians and authors. The question of who works in creative occupations has also attracted significant sociological attention. To date, however, there have been no empirically grounded studies into the changing social composition of such occupations. This article uses the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study to show that, while those from more privileged social backgrounds have long dominated, there has been no change in the relative class mobility chances of gaining access to creative work. Instead, we must turn to the pattern of absolute mobility into this sector in order to understand claims that it is experiencing a 'mobility crisis'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Securing, and negotiating, privacy with intimate bodily needs is an ordinary but often hidden feature of our personal lives. Drawing upon a UK-based qualitative study that utilised diaries and follow-up interviews to explore everyday life with the health condition irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), this article explores the navigations of privacy when anticipating or experiencing symptoms. Building upon sociological understandings of privacy and personal life, this article maps the intimate and mobile ways in which privacy is sought out – disrupted or achieved – in domestic, material and public realms. It does so by following the paths to privacy and the personal belongings carried as they move through personal life. The article demonstrates how privacy is embodied and spatially, temporally, relationally and materially shaped. In doing so, the article argues that privacy comes to shift through everyday contexts and social relations with intimate materialities in mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the relationship between the sociology of utopia and Black visions of liberation. Influential figures from Karl Mannheim to Ruth Levitas have effectively demonstrated the value of a utopian perspective for sociology. However, the African American tradition of utopianism has been largely overlooked in this literature. I argue that the Black standpoint forces a rethinking of the sociological understanding of utopia. More specifically, while most sociologists of utopia straightforwardly associate the desire for a better world with the future, the Black tradition proposes a more expansive understanding of utopia's temporality. Building on visions of new worlds advanced by WEB Du Bois and the movement for reparations for slavery, I suggest that Black utopia involves a glance backwards to the past, such that the image of a better future is accompanied by the memory of the catastrophe of slavery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the introduction of the influential 'doing' family perspective, an active understanding of parents has taken centre stage in sociological thinking on how families are constructed. However, this has not extended to children, and their roles as co-constructors of families have not received the same amount of attention. This article examines the practices children use to construct themselves as child of someone in relation to a parent. By locating children's practices within the 'doing' family perspective, the article identifies three levels of childhood in families – being child, doing child and reflecting child. The article shows how the three levels must be understood in relation to discourses on what it means to be a 'good' child of someone, as these moral questions influence what children come to do. The article draws on interviews with 39 children (aged 5–17 years) from two studies that explored children's family relationships in challenging family circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While studying sociology can be empowering and transformative, fostering criticality and reflexivity, this capacity is not being sufficiently harnessed in school/college-based delivery in England. A large survey of sociology teachers revealed that they are required to teach outdated and sometimes discredited studies, which can reinforce rather than challenge stereotypes held by the privileged and which can be disempowering for those students who cannot recognise their own experiences. This article provides a unique insight into the ways that school/college curricula reinforce inequality and contributes to important debates within the sociology of education. Specifically, the article argues that the work being undertaken to decolonise the curriculum in universities, through challenging structural and discursive operations of power, should also inform the revision of school/college specifications. The lessons from this study can be usefully applied to the teaching of sociology beyond England and indeed to other subject disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questions about the future, and futurelessness, have attracted wide-ranging attention in recent years. Our article explores what Sociology offers. We reflect on the apparent contradiction that the future was bracketed off from the discipline in its early history, yet also offers rich theoretical, methodological and empirical resources for futures research. We demonstrate this through an analysis of the contributions to this Special Issue, each of which draws on explicitly Sociological theories and methods to consider futures in a range of fields. Finally, we explore further developments necessary for a Sociology of the Future. We argue that Sociology can and should be more directly involved in claiming what futures might be, should be and in materialising these claims. This means moving beyond Sociology – as a distinct set of resources – towards expansive engagement with other future-making actors. This may challenge and change Sociology but may also be key to its future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Scott's career as a sociologist spans more than 50 years, during which time he has written or edited more than 40 books among a total of more than 200 publications. The breadth of his interests and his service to the discipline in various roles including as President of the British Sociological Association and chair of the Sociology sub-panel for the Research Assessment Exercise and the Research Excellence Framework make him particularly well-placed to comment on sociology's history and its trajectories. His 2020 book British Sociology: A History presents a painstakingly researched account of the discipline's shifting fortunes in which its practitioners have responded to intellectual opportunities and practical challenges to promote vibrant and multifaceted debate about the nature of social structures and the direction of social change. In the interview that follows he responds to questions from Graham Crow and Linda McKie to argue that knowledge of the discipline's history has a key role to play informing today's sociologists of the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to 'sociologies of the future' by discussing the concept of 'futurelessness'. I provide a conceptual elaboration of what is meant by 'futurelessness', beginning with its use in the psychological literature of the 1980s concerned with the effect of a constant threat of nuclear war. I argue that this concept is of value to ongoing sociological debates about the relationship between imagined futures, power and social change. I further discuss the extent to which 'futurelessness' is a particular mode of relating to and feeling about the future that is characteristic of contemporary European societies. I discuss how this 'futurelessness' must be understood in relation to political and cultural developments of the past 50 years and consider its significance for sociological debates about contemporary futurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a theoretical evaluation of the author's attempts at decolonising a sociology and social theory course in Singapore. It also introduces the notion of 'decolonial reflexivity' as a strategy for refining academic decolonisation. In doing so, this article seeks to overcome both the insufficient introspection about the potential for coloniality to reside within efforts at academic decolonisation, and the tendency to separate theoretical and applied discussions about academic decolonisation. It is argued that the author's attempts to decolonise the curriculum were limited because the course may have inadvertently: (a) sustained exclusion while claiming to be inclusive; (b) maintained the status quo while claiming to be radical; and (c) reinscribed Westerncentrism while claiming to decolonise. This article suggests that although academic decolonisation is a commendable aspiration, academics who wish to decolonise must continually consider the theoretical complexities that are generated by our attempts at academic decolonisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the world is witness to over 80 million forcibly displaced persons, Turner's neo-Hobbesian theory of human rights, first proposed in this journal decades ago, warrants revisiting. Turner highlights parallels between his foundationalist approach to human rights and Hobbes' theory of the state. Both thinkers conceive of a vulnerable human in need of a protective canopy. However, Turner neglects Hobbes' account of rights, and with it the key social dimensions of Hobbes' theory. Hobbes places great importance on the social conditions of the rights-bearing person. He contrasts two distinct social spaces inhabited by the stateless person and the citizen respectively, and the kinds of rights they hold. For Hobbes, rights are protected only in society, an ideal-typical social space secured by the state. This article proposes a revised neo-Hobbesian theory of human rights that incorporates Hobbes' treatment of rights as a social concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-colonial debate challenges the self-certainty of sociology and the suggested universality of its theoretical premises. This has led to calls to provincialize sociological theories and concepts and include perspectives from the South. Thus, we need to ask whether sociological concepts apply globally. Burawoy's notion of a professional 'global sociology' offers a starting point for provincializing sociological concepts without giving up their global applicability. The problems involved in applying the core sociological category of class to Kenya show that classical sociological concepts may be inadequate for analysing societies outside the European and North American context. For the analysis of inequality, we need a more open and empirically founded concept in which the classical notion of class describes just a particular pattern of social structure. For the development of sociological concepts, we always require a broad empirical and intercultural basis in order not to be caught in the trap of Eurocentrism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical sociology’s focus on ‘things’ follows an Aristotelian legacy that prioritises discreteness and concrete singularities – that which are perceived to exist. In turn, such convention is predicated on an ontology of being and a natural focus on presence – the ubiquitous assumption that reality is ultimately atomistic and substantial. This metaphysical outlook has produced outstanding scholarly results. However, it also overlooks the significance of an alternative absence, a persistent but undetected ‘otherness’ that can affect social outcomes. The study shows how absences shape actionable imperatives in social settings and identifies requisite mechanisms through which social arrangements are enacted. Thus, it joins the burgeoning sociology of nothing, absence and loss and stresses the enactive consequentiality of what is missing through a sensemaking lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological explorations of trends of later parenthood have paid insufficient attention to the significance of intimate relationships, and of connectedness more generally, for such trends. This article presents findings from qualitative interviews with men (n = 25) who do not (yet) have children about their experiences of intimate relationship establishment and progression and imaginaries of fatherhood, presenting three themes: dating as elusive, fatherhood as elusive for unpartnered men and intimate relationships as risky. Findings are discussed in relation to theories of connection and connectedness, and theories of masculinities to consider how narratives are structurally shaped by gender. The article discusses the nuanced, complex ways in which people do and do not form and practise close relationships, and introduces the concept of ‘misconnect’ to better attend to disjunction in connection, discussing the significance of this concept for understandings of later parenthood and for the sociology of personal life more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues the importance of considering wageless life and related post-wage regimes of work in the study of creative and cultural labour. Such consideration is necessary to understand how creative workers persevere in their profession, dedicating substantial amounts of time to making art in spite of prolonged precarity and low, irregular or non-existent wages. The article revisits sociological studies of creative work and finds that although such studies have tended to neglect the wageless life of creative workers they have nonetheless implicitly identified a range of alternative economic activities and 'consumption work' practices that go beyond wages and formal contractual employment. These activities include everyday strategies for 'getting by', such as barter, self-provisioning, commoning, thrift and downshifting. A systematic and sustained focus on wageless life that treats work as deeply enmeshed in everyday life is needed in order to make manifest the hidden politics of contemporary post-waged creative work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociology of the body developed as a reaction against Cartesian conceptions of homo clausus that haunted disciplinary thought in the late 20th century but exhibited anthropocentric tendencies in neglecting non-human animals. Building upon recent attempts to address this situation, I develop a transactional approach towards body pedagogics that explores how the shifting borders governing human–animal relations influence people's embodied identities. Transactions between humans and (other) animals have been an historic constant across contrasting societies, but the patterning of these exchanges is framed by specific cultural body pedagogics. Focusing on the institutional means, characteristic experiences and corporeal outcomes of 'civilising' and 'companionate' human–animal body pedagogics, I explore the identity-shaping impact of these different modalities of inter-species inter-corporeality and demonstrate the sociological utility of this transactional approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By reconsidering Simmel's concept of space, this article introduces space into the epistemological field of relational sociology to construct a relational spatiality based on relational sociology, demonstrating the continuity between spatial and relational approaches in the study of modernity. It first explains Simmel's relational epistemology and the metropolis, and then constructs the relational spatiality vis-a-vis the two main viewpoints of contemporary relational sociology. Space is relational in nature because it is defined by iterative interactions between actors, which go beyond visible geographical cognition to sociologically express the living process people experience in fragmentary forms of social space. Furthermore, this relational spatiality, combined with Michel Foucault's discourse, reveals the process attribute of space from the perspective of relational sociology, showing the possibility of a spatial epistemology based on relational sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology was founded as a positivist and universal science that obscured its national parameters. A first response was to attack false universalism with the particularism of indigenous sociologies, but this effectively reproduced the domination of northern sociologies. A second response has been to recognize and trace the superimposition of national traditions in a hierarchical world. With the movement toward commodification and rationalization of knowledge production, however, national sociologies have been aligned with and merged into the global field of sociology. Opting out of this field leaves one in the wilderness, so the third response is to enter struggle on the terrain of this global field, which in turn requires accountability to publics. To be sure there are limits to these struggles, but they are nonetheless important in keeping sociology alive as a distinct discipline, that is keeping alive the critical standpoint of civil society against the over-extension of the market and its accomplice the regulatory state.

This article analyzes the limitations of qualitative research methods that over-privilege textual analysis in North American sociology graduate programs. I argue that visual literacy, as a methodological tool, is neglected and marginalized in the graduate curriculum. Training in visual culture including the use of photography, film and video, can contribute to theoretically grounded empirical research on race and racism. A form of academic apartheid continues to restrict the types of qualitative research methods that are authorized and regularly taught in graduate programs in sociology.

The article presents an interview with Professor Les Back talking about class and community driving the path into sociology. Topics include task of the academic practice of sociology being a kind of lay making the familiar strange; and objects to stories of globalisation, supply chains, manufacturing in the global South as well as colonialism.

Despite increasing social pressure to use new digital technologies, older people's adoption of them remains below other age groups. This article contributes a sociological dimension to exploring what facilitates learning and using digital technology in later life. We focus on the understudied group of older people who are frail, living in care homes and most likely to be digitally excluded or restricted. Drawing on data from a longitudinal mixed methods study of a co-designed communication app for older people, we explore how attempts to bridge the 'digital divide' unfold in time. Using the concept of affordances, we show how adoption of a new communication technology is shaped by its design, learning contexts and surrounding social actors. With this work we contribute to novel sociological understandings of technology adoption that are critical for digital inequality research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a rigorous conceptualisation of an undeveloped sociological concept: conditional belonging. It implements and develops conditional belonging in the setting of everyday life by examining female fans of science fiction. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with female fans of Doctor Who and Star Wars, this study defines conditional belonging as a liminal state in which new members are constructed as a threatening 'other' and required to demonstrate conformity to the community. Having to align with values established by veteran members disrupts the ability of those who conditionally belong to perceive their identities as authentic. Conditional belonging is explored in offline and online settings, exposing the tactics used online by female fans to ensure their belonging. Through demonstrating the ways in which conditional belonging is cultivated and enforced, this article contributes to a nuanced understanding of belonging, not as a binary condition, but a multi-layered, complex one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To the limited extent that sociologists have considered non-academics' trust in sociologists, legitimacy has become entwined with the idea of a value-free, 'objective' sociology. However, broader philosophical/sociological work suggests that credibility signals are more complex, with, for example, non-partisanship being separate to epistemic responsibility. In this article, I explore the nature of 'credibility work' in practice via interviews with 15 prominent English sociologists, making three contributions. First, I find that some sociologists deliberately pursue credibility, a phenomenon largely ignored in previous research. They do this primarily by 'performing' non-partisanship or epistemic responsibility within interactions. Second, this credibility work does not require the pursuit of 'objectivity'; sociologists can signal epistemic responsibility despite partisanship, or pursue 'dispassionate advocacy'. Third, the extent and nature of credibility work varies by context; indeed some sociologists benefit from partisanship, while others feel no need for credibility work. I conclude by stressing the need for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time when nationalist sentiment is on the rise, this special issue takes stock of how sociology can contribute to understanding the past, present and future of nationalism. In contrast to declarations of 'the end of history', which was also meant to herald increasing integration due to a lowering of cultural and national barriers, nationalism never went away. The articles in this collection engage with the question of nationalism at a theoretical and empirical level and in different regional contexts, assessing how national boundaries are drawn and policed, how national identities are formed and the myriad political and everyday consequences of nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on 27 interviews with women (with exclusive and non-exclusive sexual orientations) to understand the role of pornography in the construction of female sexuality. Building upon research that moves beyond the 'negative effects paradigm' in the study of pornography, we show that consuming pornography is both disciplining and empowering for women. Our informants recognise that pornography reproduces and promotes patriarchal discourses of sexuality, but they manage to use it to reach a state of pleasure (exercise of fantasy, sexual gratification) and perfection (optimal way of performing sex). We also show pornography's role in cultivating a renewed understanding of female sexuality. In this process, aspects of the genre are questioned, negotiated and reconciled in order to continue using pornography to satisfy desire. We contribute to ongoing debates about the role of pornography in society by documenting the experiences of women whose voices have been hitherto underrepresented in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Serious illness has typically been explored as emergent within the relatively linear unfolding of the steady march of time. Here, focusing on cancer and drawing on the accounts of patient/carer dyads, we propose a relational ontology of the affective and temporal entanglements of living-with disease. Emphasising the iterative intra-activity of vital matter and social meaning as they are repatterned across time, we examine the enfolding of various temporal, affective and normative dis/continuities that become particularly meaningful – or are made to matter – in the context of living/dying-with cancer. We focus on the social practices of 'making memories', 'anticipating absence' and 'maintaining normal' which reveal the entanglement of seemingly discrete categories such as self and other, here and gone, and past, present and future. Living-with cancer thus emerges as more than an illness/caring experience, but rather as instructive in contributing to a relational understanding of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weddings are collective rituals that enable couples to show their solemn commitment to an invited audience. In this sense, weddings can thus be viewed as important forms of 'display work'. While there are clear commonalities between rituals and display work, particularly in terms of their emphasis on spectacle, demonstration and audience, little attention has been given to how display work can inform and indeed transform wedding rituals. We use display work as a lens for exploring how same-sex couples construct and enact their wedding. In particular we show how heteronormative, gendered traditions that underpin the wedding rite are negotiated. Our findings demonstrate the interplay between display work and normative ritual elements. We identify four tactics of 'reflexive display': strategic compliance; playful appropriation; annexation; and conspicuous absence. Together, these show how the wedding rite is done, undone or redone, to reflect each couple's unique relationship and perspective on same-sex union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Making and consuming food are evident aspects in migrants' construction and reproduction of memory, identity and belonging. Food consumption can also enable migrants to make themselves at home abroad by reproducing aspects of their past and relating them to particular places in the present. This article draws from ethnographic work in Ecuadorian restaurants in Madrid to investigate the 'domestication' of space through their material culture. It examines the representation and use of these restaurants to unveil multiple ways of displaying belonging and reproducing degrees of domesticity. Enacting private routines, embodying familiarity through food and decorating backbars are instances that reveal how the material arrangements in migrant-run restaurants facilitate the construction of a sense of home. From a sociological perspective, this article reveals how the boundaries between private and public, as well as migrants' ethnicity and belonging, are constantly reshaped through material arrangements that operate as forms of domestication of space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing inequalities have prompted research on the wealthiest groups and their cohesive practices and ideologies. This article suggests that emotional expression – how the members of the wealthy upper class feel about themselves and the rest of society – provides a way to examine their position in society. Drawing from interviews with business executives who belong to the richest 0.1% in Finland and to their society's power elites, I argue that just as low-income groups feel resentful towards more affluent groups, the wealthy also harbour resentment towards more disadvantaged groups. The wealthy executives create an emotionally laden self-justification – a deep story – in which they feel positively about themselves but assign negative feelings to other classes. In this narrative, the optimistic business elites thus become gloomy societal elites, who build empathy walls against the less advantaged groups even in Finland, one of the world's most equal countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]